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cuz 



THIS IS NUMBER 

OF A LIMITED EDITION OV 
FIVE HUNDRED COPIES 



•.#• 



cuz 

lAMS 
POEMS 
and PAPERS 



wfK'COUSINS 

EDITOR OF THE SOUTHERN 
PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL 



DALLAS, TEXAS 
ARTHUR S. MATHIS, Publisher 



t^. 






Copyright December, 1922 
By Arthur S. Mathis and W. H. Cousins 



PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 
THE DALLAS PRESS, INC. 



JAN -8 '23 

©CIAGOSISS YY^« 



I hereby dedicate this book to 
John A. Weeks of Ballinger, Texas, 
and Ernest Berger of Tampa, Fla. 
They are the two pals who have 
furnished much of the inspiration 
for its contents. 



PREFACE 

When Mr. Cousins wrote *i am a Smile" he produced 
a gem and wrote his own biogmphy. He lives the philos- 
ophy therein expressed. 

As he is one who "Haint hankerin* fur the limelight,'* 
as he says in "The Chap That Lives Next Door/* it was 
not easy to induce him to give his consent to the publica- 
tion of this book. He finally consented as a result of my 
argument that the world is full of popular books devoid of 
either humor or "horse sense," and there is certainly room 
for one containing both. 

During my twenty-four years in the book trade search- 
ing for good sellers that were worth selling, there ap- 
peared only occasionally a volume that appealed to me as 
something original and worth while. There is in Mr. 
Cousins* writing a distinct originality and a peculiar 
charm combining hiunor, satire and philosophy. 

One thing that is left out of most books is information 
concerning the author's life. It seems to me that when 
reading a book the reader would appreciate a brief sketch 
of the author. Mr. Cousins is a product of the great 
Southwest — of the natural and unadulterated variety. 

In his own words the facts are : 

Bom near Waco, Texas, August 18, 1879. 1 

Educated in the school of experience.. 
First job (not position) with F. M. Morton 
and Joe Lee Ferguson on the M. N. Ranch. 
Combination bronk-buster and horse- wrang- 
ler. Later promoted to trail cook for the "^1 
M. N.'s moving herds to Oklahoma. '\ 

Carried a "United States Pharmacopoeia," 
a "Remington's Practice of Pharmacy," and | 



a copy of "Roget's Thesaurus of English 
Words" in the chuck-box behind the flour 
sack. Joe Lee Ferguson swears that to this 
day he has indigestion from eating sour 
dough biscuits that I made in 1899. Was a 
valet to Texas steers until 1900. 

Later forsook a princely salary of $30 a 
month; climbed off of a cow pony, learned 
to wear a collar and roll compound cathartic 
pills in Terrell's Drug Store at Haskell, 
Texas, sixty miles from a railroad. Passed 
an examination before a district board of 
pharmacy, composed of Fred Grayum of 
Snyder, Texas ; Caleb L. Terrell of Haskell, 
Texas, and I. P. Collier of Aspermont, Texas, 
June 24, 1902. 

Started Cousins' Drug Store at Munday, 
Texas, fifty miles from the terminus of the 
Wichita Valley, an alleged railroad. The 
principal items of merchandise in the stock 
of this store was strychnine-sulphate in 
pound tins and carbon-disulphide in iron 
barrels. The former was for wolves and the 
latter for prairie dogs. 

Bought the Palace Drug Store at Wichita 
Falls, Texas, in 1915. Later sold the store 
at Munday to Clarence A. Eiland, its present 
owner. Sold the Palace Drug Store in 1915. 
Bought The Southern Pharmaceutical 
Journal April 15, 1915. Was elected secre- 
tary-treasurer of the Texas Pharmaceutical 
Association in 1915. Was elected president 
of the National Association of Retail Drug- 
gists in Cleveland in 1918. 

Most of the material in this volume has been taken 
from The Southern Pharmaceutical Journal without 
change or modification in any way. 

ARTHUR S. MATHIS. 

Dallas, Texas. 



INDEX 



Across the Counter 133 

Awakening of Emory (The) 113 

Business Needs of Pharmacy (The) 155 

Camouflage (The) 81 

Chap That Lives Next Door (The) 60 

Christmas Greeting (A) 69 

Danger of Alcoholic Medicine (The) 184 

Double Nuisance Tax (The) 189 

Drama of Life (The) 72 

Druggist (The) 79 

Druggist and His Troubles (The) 147 

Druggists and Vacations 180 

Druggist the Goat (The) 179 

Druggist to His Wife (A) 81 

Drug Store Romance (A) 80 

Editorial Cob Pipe (The) 172 

Fable of Sparticus Jawsmith, M. D. (The) 95 

Fishing 169 

Generally Speaking 107 

Get the Hook 137 

Great Decrease in Drinkers 181 

Heck Rogers 181 

I AM— 

Alcohol 63 

Ambition . 16 

America 44 

American Liberty Loan Bond (an) 45 

American Red Cross Nurse (the) 47 

Aristocracy of Brains (the) 22 

Automobile (the) 35 

Boy in the Trenches (the) 46 

Chemist (the) 31 



I AM— 



Cigarette (the) 65 

Country Doctor (the) 39 

Credit 30 

Customer (the) 42 

Democracy 21 

Empress Nicotine 56 

Experience 17 

Faith 14 

Flapper (the) 5a 

Grafter (the) 60 

Hunch (the) 18 

Inefficiency 20 

Jellybean (the) 59 

John Barleycorn 62 

Kaiser (the) 54 

Morphine 64 

N. A. R. D. (the) 67 

New Orleans 51 

Newsie (a) 41 

New Year (the) 25 

Nickel Cigar (the) 65 

Peace 24 

Perseverance 15 

Precedent 19 

Printed Page (the) 23 

Procrastination 29 

Sales Manager (the) 40 

San Antonio 50 

School of Experience (a) 32 

Slacker (a) 53 

Smile (a) 13 

Spring 26 

Steel 34 

System 31 

Telephone (the) 57 

Texas 49 

Texas State Fair (the) 52 

Time 27 

Today 28 

Traveling Man (the) 43 

U. S. A. (the) 48 



I AM— 

War 55 

Your Business 33 

Your Druggist 37 

Your Oil Stock 61 

Your Printer 36 

Jobber (The) 187 

John Barleycorn Leaving Texas 183 

Letter of Advice on Running a Newspaper 161 

Men of the Old West 33 

Modern Pharmacy Questions 187 

Mother and the Girls 174 

My Boy 70 

Nerve 178 

New Use for an Old Chemical (A) 170 

Oklahoma Round-Up (The) 86 

One for the Irish 73 

One Woman (The) 70 

Original Cost (The) 175 

Passing of Jack London (The) 173 

Price of Success (The) 89 

Round-Up in New Awleans (A) 85 

Service and the High Cost of Living 171 

Some Facts About the Doctor 164 

Some Grafters I Have Known 101 

Some Impressions of the Journey 127 

Some Retail Drug Store Experiences 141 

Some Specialty Crooks I Have Met 121 

State Board Questions 188 

Take Me Back 71 

Tennessee Hero (A) 165 

Terbacker Smoke 76 

Texas 177 

That Mean Letter 176 

That Round-Up in Memphis 84 

Thinker (The) 167 

Things That Come in a Drug Store 117 

Tile and Till 191 

Toast to the Kaiser 78 

To My Son 77 

To the Bride 78 

To the C. V. D. A 83 

Traveling Salesman (The) 165 

Tribute (A) 82 

Universal Peace 172 

What Are You Going to Do? 190 

When a Man's a Man 75 

Work or Fight 185 



I AMS 13 



I 



AM a bouquet that may be placed in 
the hands of the living but not on the 
bier of the dead. 



-^I drive anger from the face of the 
fighting man, fear from the lips of a 
child and arrest the despondent thrust 
of self-destruction. 

-I am the emblem of universal friend- 
ship, a token of love and the greatest 
asset of the business world. 

-I have averted murder, prevented sui- 
cide and brought hope to the slough 
of despond. 

-I have changed poverty to opulence, 
gloom to gladness and turned right- 
about the courses of those whose feet 
had taken hold on hell. 

-I lighten the burden of the struggler, 
temper the day of toil and illuminate 
life's darkest hours. 

-I am that with which a beggar has 
bought a crust of bread, the traveler 
a draught of water and the enchant- 
ress the throne of a king. 

I AM A SMILE 



14 / AMS 



I 



AM the foundation of accomplish- 
ment, the mother of hope and the 
capstan to which is moored success in 
life. 

— I am the driving power behind the his- 
tory makers of the world. 

— I steel the weary traveler to another 
mile on the uphill road and make him 
forget his crushing burden and bleed- 
ing feet. 

— I have brought back the prodigal son 
from the toils of crime and shame. 

— I have rescued mother's wayward 
daughter from the primrose path ere 
her feet took hold on Hell. 

— -I have spread hope in the slough of 
despond and cheated the menacing 
hand of self-destruction. 

— I have raised the human wreck from 
degradation's depths and turned his 
face toward hope and God. 

— I am a shaft of light from the great 
beyond without which all day in all 
lives would be of blackest night. 

— I am that for which martyrs of the 
ages have given their lives. 

I AM FAITH 



/ AMS 15 



I 



AM the hope of ambition, the price of 
progress and the chief requisite of 
success. 



-I am that restless unseen force that 
goads men on to the accomplishment 
of the seemingly impossible. Today 
I rear stately structures in the ashes 
of yesterday's ruins. 

-I urge and cheer to further action the 
tired hands of the toiler who but for 
me would succumb. 

-My work began at creation's dawn; 
my wage is the accumulated progress 
of the ages. 

-I have conquered the sea, the earth 
and the air. Those brilliant accomp- 
lishments that are the wonders of the 
past, the marvels of the present and a 
challenge to the future are my handi- 
work. 

-I have builded a monument to myself 
on the solid rock of experience. 

-I have added cubits to the mental 
stature of man and a continent to the 
map of the world. 

I AM PERSEVERANCE 



16 / AMS 



I 



AM the motive power of human 
action, the mainspring of prog- 
ress, and the heart throb in the 

men who make history. 

—I have brought bread to the starv- 
ing, education to the unlearned, 
and fame to the obscure. 

— To gratify me, Pericles built 
Athens ; Homer made a nation, a 
language and a religion; and Na- 
poleon laid waste to a continent. 

— I have conquered the wild forests 
and turned them into fields of 
golden grain that feed the million. 

— I have unleashed the dogs of war 
that have left pestilence, poverty 
and death in their wake. 

— On one I have left the mark of 
honor; on another the brand of 
shame. 

— To one I am heaven's blessing ; to 
another, the curse of hell. 

I AM AMBITION 



I 



/ AMS 17 



AM the Mother of Efficiency, the re- 
ward of work and the tutor of the 
world's greatest teachers. 

— I am the mark that distinguishes the 
expert from the novice. 

— I am the gift of the years, the founda- 
tion of achievement and the price of 
success. 

— I am the brightest gem that flashes 
from the casket of man's endowment. 

— I am worth whatever man is able to 
pay even to the last wage penny of a 
life of toil. 

— I have charted the seas of life on which 
I am the Master Pilot. 

— I am that thing without which the re- 
sult of human action would be the 
wildest gamble. 

— I am the chalice from which all must 
drink and from which no two draughts 
shall be the same. 

— I strengthen the hearts of oak, steady 
the nerves of steel and plow deep con- 
volutions in the brain of man. 

— I am the tracings on the seismograph 
of life. 

— I am for the scion and the slave, the 
philosopher and the fool. 

— I am the voice of the years that have 
flown. 

— I am the yesterday by which the mor- 
row must be measured. 

I AM EXPERIENCE 



18 / AMS 



I 



AM the wee small voice half 
heard and almost unintellig- 
ible. 



-I am the germ of an idea that 
meditation must nurse into life. 

-I am the wireless from nowhere, 
the fleeting image half seen 
through a glass darkly. I grow 
first into an impulse, then into 
action. 

-I have led men on, to conquer 
the world and no man ever 
reached success without me. 

-I melt away the deceptive mir- 
age and reveal the hard rocks of 
reality. 

-I am possibility touching the 
arm of consciousness to intro- 
duce opportunity. 

-I am a dream courier from out 
the darkness softly whispering, 
"You can do it." 

-Heed my call and ponder my 
promptings. 

I AM THE HUNCH 



/ AMS 19 



I 



AM the dim mountain path, narrow, 
tortuous and rough, which mangled 
the feet of the traveler of yesteryears. 

— I am the anchor to which was moored 
the craft of historic yesterday. 

— I am the formula of life of the days 
that are gone. I am the inscription 
on the sarcophagus of a dead world. 

— I am the disappointing quaff from the 
dusty chalice drained and dried by the 
passing ages. 

— I am the fallen foe of progress, a worn 
brake on the wheels of advancement 
and a dying enemy of hope. 

— I am the crumbling base from which 
has fallen the plaster cast erected to 
the superstitions of antiquity. 

— I am useless to the pioneer who would 
hew a habitation from the virgin for- 
est; I am a lighthouse, set in safe wa- 
ters, a thousand miles from the rocks. 

— I am a signboard on the beaten path 
that leads to nowhere. 

I AM PRECEDENT 



20 / AMS 



I 



AM the brake on the wheels of progress. 
I am the cause of all the lost motion and 
misdirected power in the world. 

-I am the half-milled bearing, the leaky 
valve, the bent eccentric that diverts power 
from production to waste, and helps a 
great engine pound itself into junk. 

-I stand between man and success, crushing 
him into failure. 

-I am a barrier over which none may pass. 

-I am the difference between mediocrity 
and perfection in the service a man renders 
to the world. 

-I limit the usefulness and lessen the wage 
of my victims. 

-I am the flaw that mars the brilliance and 
renders imperfect the gems of the human 
race. My record in the world of business 
is one of bankruptcy, ruin, shame and sui- 
cide. 

-I am the fault in the foundation on which 
stately structures are erected only to col- 
lapse. But for me every worker would 
achieve success, and man's service to his 
fellows would approach perfection. 

-I am a deadly germ in the tissues of busi- 
ness and a millstone about the neck of in- 
dustry. 

I AM INEFFICIENCY 



/ AMS 21 



I AM the priceless treasure for 
which hoards of gold have been 
spent and oceans of blood shed. 

— I am an ideal which the centuries 
have brought nearer each succeed- 
ing year across battle fields thick- 
ly strewn with martyred dead. 

— From seed once sown in ancient 
Greece, I have spread from shore 
to shore with the passing of the 
years. 

— I have made a serf the idol of the 
race ; I have crumbled the throne 
of the despot; 

— I have unmanacled the slave, and 
this age shall see me sweep from 
the face of the earth the last rem- 
nant of that hellish parasite, the 
tyrant. 

— I am the earned wage paid by a 
just God. 

— ^I am coming to all the world and 
my reign shall end with the finale 
of time. 

I AM DEMOCRACY 



22 / AMS 



I 



AM a fraternity as exclusive as 
the gods, yet without creed or 
constitution. My laws are un- 
written, unexpounded and un- 
broken. 

— I am a caste dating from the 
sunrise of time, which no boast- 
ed democracy can ever oblite- 
rate or destroy. 

— I am a nobility at whose shrine 
the world must bow the knee 
and whose mandates mankind 
had best obey. 

— I am an unrelenting monarch 
who must dictate in every age 
and land and clime. 

— I am the superior of an alien 
world that gropes in darkness 
without my sacred realm, a 
forum in which the wealth of 
Croesus could not buy a place 
to raise a voice. 

I AM THE ARISTOCRACY 
OF BRAINS 



/ AMS 23 



I 



AM the plate in the seismograph of life, 
on which the hand of Time has traced the 
history of a world. 

-I am the graven record of the thoughts and 
actions of man from the dawn of time to 
the passing moment. 

-I am the perfect footprints of flying years 
and a signboard to the passing million on 
the blazed trail that leads from creation to 
eternity. 

-I am a chart of the ages, an inventory of 
the years. 

-I am a biography of the universe. Through 
me the man of today interviews the oracles 
of antiquity and consults the sages of yes- 
teryears. 

-I am a monument to the world's workers 
more enduring than marble shafts and 
more impressive than the painted canvas 
of the artist's dream. 

■I am the storehouse into which great minds 
have poured golden thoughts before they 
were stilled by the grim reaper and passed 
to the realms of the mystic beyond. 

-I am the history of today, left for the guid- 
ance of tomorrow. 

I AM THE PRINTED PAGE 



24 / AMS 



I AM the boon for which 
the world has waited, 
watched and prayed. 

— My coming shall stop 
the marching hordes, 
seal the cannon's mouth, 
and end the reign of 
death. 

— All swords shall now to 
plowshares turn, and 
battlefields be sown to 
grain instead of blood 
and tears. 

— I am that which with 
good-will to men, Christ 
wished to all the world. 

I AM PEACE 



/ AMS 25 



I 



AM a link in the chain of the 
ages, a chapter in the history 
of the world, a milestone on 
the sands of time. 

-I am one lap in the race of life, 
a step toward the great divide, 
a turn of the sand glass that 
measures to man his three score 
years and ten. 

-I am an open page in which the 
philosopher may record the de- 
ductions, the toiler his triumphs 
and the fool his folly. 

-My dawn is a call to the fields, 
my noonday a scene of toil that 
my evening may be a well- 
earned harvest of the rich fruits 
of effort. 

-I am the tablet of stone on 
which man writes his own rec- 
ord. 

I AM THE NEW YEAR 



26 I AMS 



I 



AM an oasis in the desert of the years. 
I am the sunny morning of time, when 
nature spreads her broad warm smile over 

the denizens of earth. 



-I am the awakening time of the flower, the 
leaf, and the songbird. My coming is an- 
nounced by the blushing violet on the 
wooded hills, and by nature's grand opera 
stars singing in the trees. 

-I am that gladsome season that brings 
the mating of the birds, the bursting of the 
buds, and fills the balmy air with a thou- 
sand sweet perfumes from the laboratory 
of God. 

-I make man understand the mystic lan- 
guage of nature as spoken by the babbling 
brooklet, the rugged [mountain and the 
rushing river that is hurrying onward to 
the sea. 

-I have seen once flowery fields torn by 
cannon shot and drenched with heroes' 
blood. 

-I have heard the songbird's trill drowned 
by the dying groans of mothers' sons — 
but I come today to bless a world at peace, 
and to pour the balm of nature into heart 
wounds made by the demon war. 

I AM SPRING 



/ AMS 27 



I 



AM the multi-colored film on the 
screen of life. I am a panorama 
of all that has transpired from 
the birth of the world to the pass- 
ing moment. 

1 have seen man at his birth; I 
have seen him grow old; I have 
seen him fade as a flower of the 
field and pass through the dark 
and solemn vale which no man 
has been permitted to look be- 
yond. 

■I have noted the shimmering wa- 
ters of a crystal lake and looked 
back a thousand years hence to 
find in its place a majestic snow- 
covered mountain. To me an age 
is but a day, and a century but a 
turn of the sand-glass that meas- 
ures my duration. 

-I am the most wasted thing that 
man possesses, yet no glittering 
gem or virgin gold is precious 
enough to remunerate man for 
my loss. 

-Lost wealth may be regained by 
diligent toil, lost health may re- 
turn as a wage for obeying na- 
ture's laws, but when I am lost 
the God of the universe can not 
recall me. 

I AM TIME 



28 / AMS 



I 



AM your distinguished visitor. You never be- 
held my face before and soon I go my way 
never to return. Yesterday I was hope, to- 
morrow I am history. 

— I come once 'twixt the birth of time and the 
end of eternity. 

— I am the event of greatest moment in the lives 
of men who do and dare. If you use me, I will 
bless your future life; if you waste me, I will 
curse you to the end of your existence, be it one 
day or a thousand years. 

— I unlock a treasure chest that with my going 
will be closed forever and with me shall die the 
unused opportunities that I bring. 

— My coming was predicted by wise men when 
the world was young. It is announced by the 
dawn with shafts of light from the great lumi- 
nary that lights a system of worlds. Yet in a 
few hours my requiem is trilled by the song 
birds of night; my death shroud is the darkness 
and my tomb the trash heap of things that 
were. 

— ^My page in the world's history is a written 
record of the achievements of the man of deeds 
and not a chronicling of the insipid vaporizings 
of the idle dreamer. 

— I beckon to effort and plead for action. Years 
that have gone glimmering into the past mean 
nothing to me but a troubled waking dream of 
ill improved opportunities. 

— To me the future is never. "NOW" is the only 
word in the world's lexicons that I understand. 

— I record the passing of yesterday but dare not 
pledge the coming of tomorrow. 

I AM TODAY 



/ AMS 29 



I 



AM a thief more to be dreaded than 
the buccaneer of the high seas, the 
gunman of the slums or the highway- 
man of the plains. 

-I filch from my victims that which is 
more precious than gems and gold. 

-I am a barrier in the path of progress, 
an obstacle in the way of success, and 
a vampire that draws the life-blood 
from the heart of ambition. 

-I supplant strength with weakness, 
determination with indecision, and 
burn at noonday the candle of life at 
both ends. 

-The river of years is thickly strewn 
with the wreckage of crafts on which 
I was the pilot. 

-The slough of despond is alive with 
victims whose courses I have directed 
toward the lethargy of oblivion. 

-The gold of Ophir, the wealth of Croe- 
sus are no temptation to me. 

-I rob alike the rich and poor of gems 
more precious than these — I am the 
thief of days. 

I AM PROCRASTINATION 



30 / AMS 



I 



AM the foundation upon which 
the stately structures of business 
are built. 

-I am the powerful engine that 
drives the ship of commerce over 
the breakers of panic, and makes 
possible the trade of the world. 

-Without me, industry, the child 
of labor and capital must languish 
and die. The gold of Ophir and 
the grilling toil of the million 
avail nothing without me. 

-I rule with an iron hand from the 
modest shop of the countryside 
village to the seething trade marts 
of the million. 

-Nurture me and I bring my re- 
ward in gold, destroy me and the 
world retrogrades to antiquity. 

-I am the mainstay of commercial 
progress, and the sheet anchor of 
business success. 

I AM CREDIT 



/ AMS 31 



I 



AM the plans and specifications 
of success. 

I am the blue-print in the hands 
of the master builder. Without 
me accomplishment is accidental, 
progress a lottery and business a 
worse gamble than the horses or 
the cards. 

-I am a crystalization of the ex- 
periences of centuries, a gleaning 
of the best from the methods of 
the world's history makers. 

-I am as much an elemental consti- 
tuent of successful business as 
capital, equipment or experience. 

■I am an essential in every line of 
human endeavor and the time 
table of every well-ordered life. 

I AM SYSTEM 



32 / AMS 



I 



AM the fountain head of wisdom, 
the mecca of learning and the 
ahna mater of the wizards of the 
world. 



-My matriculates come from every 
walk of life and none but fools 
forget the lessons I teach. 

-The master of the seas, who sniffs 
the storm afar; the veteran, who 
beats the gamblers of the streets, 
and laughingly takes their gold, 
and he who stolidly resists the 
purple woman's smile, are honor 
men of mine. 

-No dying day e'er passes into 
night that does not on my roster 
write truths never taught before. 

-No gilded sunrise flecks the skies 
but that finds new tutors in my 
realm. 

-I am a school from which no tru- 
ant plays, with unlearned lesson 
passed. 

I AM A SCHOOL OF 
EXPERIENCE 



/ AMS 33 



I AM your support, your mission, 
your life, yet I bring the wrinkles 
of years to your brow, and the 
silver of age to your locks. 

— I place burdens heavier, and heav- 
ier on your weakening shoulders 
as your aging form totters on the 
uphill road. Your life's maddest 
battles are fought for me. 

— I give you a myriad of cares and 
comforts, tribulations and tri- 
umphs. 

— I take your waking hours and 
haunt your dreams with both pain 
and pleasure. 

— I am your world, into which you 
were born, in which you live and 
from which a cortege will bear 
your dust back to earth from 
whence it came. 

— I am your life's burden, yet swept 
from your shoulders I leave you 
aged of body, broken of spirit and 
troubled of mind. 

I AM YOUR BUSINESS 



34 / AMS 



I 



AM the right arm of industry, 
the Atlas of progress, a wonder 
of the age and a blessing to the 
world. 

•My bands bind the earth to- 
gether and fleck the sea with 
ships to all the world. 

•I give to man both the sword 
and the plowshare, the sur- 
geon's needle and the man of 
war. 

-I am the sinew that holds to- 
gether piles of cement and 
stone whose roofs pierce the 
clouds. 

-I span turbulent rivers, bottom- 
less chasms and bring the ends 
of the earth close together. 

-The spring in the chronometer 
that marks the passing of time 
and the sturdy bridge girder 
that supports the world's traf- 
fic are both mine. 

-Without me the world would 
return to the wooden wheel, the 
raw-hide thong, the quill pen 
and civilization would retro- 
grade a thousand years in one 
day. 

I AM STEEL 



/ AMS 35 



I 



AM the wonder of the age, the 
acme of mechanical perfection, 
the master stroke of the hand of 
inventive genius, and a blessing 
to mankind. 



— I have shriveled continents, short- 
ened roads and made the world 
smaller. 

— I have brought the mountain 
wilds nigh to the city street, and 
the ends of the earth close to- 
gether; I have removed the hill 
from the highway. 

— I have eliminated distance, and 
put more hours in a day. Miles 
flow beneath my flying tread as 
from the gull's wings, and with 
the speed of the storm petrel. 

— With a heart of iron and nerves 
of steel, yet without brain or mind 
I am as true to my pilot as the 
needle to the pole. No tremb- 
ling muscles within me quake as 
I climb the rugged uphill road, no 
flying foam e'er flecks my frame 
as I push the miles behind. 

— I am withal a wonderful machine 
and a tribute to the genius of 
man. 

I AM THE AUTOMOBILE 



36 / AMS 



I AM all that's left of the honored craft 
of Franklin's day, I am a relic of the 
age of the men who made possible the 
far flung printed page. 

— I am of the vocation of the craftsman 
into whose every line went his art and 
his heart and whose composition was 
the work of skilled hands. 

— I draw the curses of the wizards of 
publicity who pose as experts but who 
know not whether an em is a stage of 
disease or a mixture of liquors. 

— I withstand the onslaught of the copy 
scrambler who thinks that Chelten- 
ham comes from the packing house. 

— I stand on aching feet and note a 
penny-a-liner explaining that **small 
pica" is a chap who won't bet over a 
dollar that the sun rises. 

— I am the sheet anchor of the printing 
game, I am as square a guy as ever 
poured powder in a safe, I am, well, 
er — 

I AM YOUR PRINTER 



/ AMS 37 



I 



AM the faithful slave who answers 
your calls in the morning, the eve- 
ning, or at the noontide of the night. 

I am the world's utility man ; my office 
hours are any hour of any day in the 
year. 

My mission is one of service to human- 
ity. My work is a skilled one on 
which the well-being of the afflicted 
must depend, and in which there is no 
place for a drowsy brain or a bungling 
hand, lest they take a human life. 

I feel the weight of responsibility and 
note that age is creeping upon me 
ahead of my years, but when I have 
answered your last call and the long 
vigil is over, methinks I shall hear the 
wee small voice saying, **He helped 
the world by his service to mankind," 
and this shall be my reward. 

■I am your skilled servant, your friend 
in time of need, and a link in the 
sprocket chain that drives the machin- 
ery of the universe. 

I AM YOUR DRUGGIST 



38 / AMS 



I 



AM a wizard more wonderful than 
the creatures of fiction's wildest 
dreams. 



— I have harnessed nature's forces and 
made them obey the beck and call of 
man. 

— My achievements are cornerstones 
upon which rests the progress of the 
world. 

— With crucible and retort I have delved 
into nature's secrets and learned her 
mysteries. 

— Look around you at the wonders that 
are for man's well-being, the cumula- 
tive achievement of a thousand years 
of history, yet but for me these could 
not have been. 

— Today, I labor with a potion that per- 
chance may save a life; tomorrow, I 
may draw a crucible within whose 
limpid depths lurks death, that mur- 
ders men by thousands. 

— I brought from the jumbled mass of 
nature the soothing opiate that cools 
the fevered brow and lulls to sleep the 
tortured frame. 

— I made the hellish gas that burns 
men's brains and bursts their lungs. 

— To one I bring the sweet, saintly rest 
of the sanctuary ; to the other, the hell 
of the battlefield. 

I AM THE CHEMIST 



/ AMS 39 



I 



AM an ambassador of hope, a messenger 
of mercy and a blessing to mankind. My 
face has felt the blistering heat of summer 

suns and the biting cold of winter snows. 

— ^I have trudged the hard road of experience 
and am old beyond my years. Into the 
hovels of poverty have I gone single hand- 
ed and alone to combat the combined 
forces of filth, ignorance and disease. 

— I have stood at the midnight hour and 
watched a wasting form from which a 
spirit threatened to take its flight. 

— With the help of Almighty God and a 
knowledge born of experience in which 
books, theories and precedents were 
thrown to the winds for the teachings of 
the grim tutor, I have won. 

— In battles with death no saintly white clad 
nurse or friendly brother of my craft is 
there, deft handed and strong shouldered 
to take a part of the crushing load that 
falls on me. 

— When my nerves cry out from punishment 
and the talons of sleep tug at my tired 
frame, I must awaken my fagging brain 
and steady my trembling hand, praying 
to checkmate the grim reaper in a game 
whose table stake is a human life. 

— ^The wage of my ceaseless toil is not gems 
and gold, the price of my accumulated 
wisdom of years is not fame, but my goal 
is the sweet satisfaction that I have done 
my best. 

I AM THE COUNTRY DOCTOR 



40 / AMS 



I 



AM the human power - plant from 
which radiates the force that drives 
the machinery of the world's com- 
merce. 

-I am the unknown and unseen dyna- 
mo, yet my resistless current is felt in 
the babble of the metropolitan marts 
and in the quiet of the rural hamlet. 

-I have dared to leave the beaten path 
and to teach men the inefficiency of 
the commercial methods of yesterday. 

-I have weighed in the balance of ex- 
perience tradition and precedent, and 
they have been found wanting. 

-In the eternal grind of a world that 
moves I have learned that methods do 
not apply to days and dates, but to 
conditions, and that a piece of mer- 
chandise is neither an asset nor a 
finished product until it is sold. 

-I am the grim exacting pilot on the 
ship of trade. 

-I am the foundation hewn from the 
solid rock of experience on which the 
commercial world stands. 

I AM THE SALES MANAGER 



/ AMS 41 



I AM a sage of the city street, a philoso- 
pher of the modern day, and an ad- 
vanced student in the school of ex- 
perience. 

— I know the shining thoroughfares 
where the ease and comfort of wealth 
abound. 

— I am acquainted with the squalid 
aisles of traffic where poverty and 
crime join hands. 

— I behold and face unstartled in each 
succeeding day things new to the 
world, without surprise or comment. 

— I have met the prince in grime and 
overalls who said "keep the change." 

— I have bartered my wares to the dia- 
mond bedecked Croesus who waited 
while my numb fingers sought a worn 
pocket for the penny which was his. 

— I have been deluged in the gush of the 
simpering society dame who left me 
with a "God bless you" hungrier than 
I was before. 

— Though young in years I am a sea- 
soned veteran in the game of life, able 
to hold my own with the rabble and 
take care of myself in the mob. 

— No wiser merchant, no shrewder bar- 
gainer can be found in the marts of 
trade than I. 

I AM A NEWSIE 



42 / AMS 



I AM the tyrant of the business world; 
I am the despot who rules it with an 
iron hand; I am the goad of progress 
and the one source of profit. 

— I have demanded every step of ad- 
vancement that has been made ; I have 
sent yesterday's methods to the scrap 
heap and installed those that meet the 
requirements of today. 

— I demand at the hands of tradesmen 
only one thing; yet that thing is every- 
thing: "Service". 

— Once I journeyed through jungles and 
over winding mountain paths to bring 
to my abode the merchandise for 
which I had need; today I demand 
that this merchandise be placed in my 
domicile in orderly array in the fewest 
possible moments. 

— I am a greater spender today than I 
have ever been in the history of busi- 
ness. In addition to the shekel I spent 
for wares I now spend another for 
service, and the wise merchant is pock- 
eting a profit on both. 

— I love the luxury of service, the depen- 
dability of merchandise, and am will- 
ing to pay the price. 

I AM THE CUSTOMER 



/ AMS 43 



I 



AM the apostle of sunshine, the per- 
sonification of progress and the opti- 
mist of the game commercial. Upon 
my success depends the bread and but- 
ter of the million. 



— I cash the pay check of the toiler, build 
the dividends of the captains of indus- 
try and put the heart throb in the 
arteries of modern business. 

— My road through life is a route list, a 
beaten path often travelled but never 
learned; cleared of barriers today to 
be filled with obstacles tomorrow. 

— Without me the world's great plants 
would close, the wheels of industry 
stop and progress die. 

— ^My life is one of persevering toil. The 
world owes me nothing but a chance 
to work. 

— I am a real man and a legitimate gam- 
bler in that I will take a chance in the 
square game and bet that my remune- 
ration is commensurate with my 
achievements. 

—I want the good will of the world to a 
man. 

— I want the sweet satisfaction that 
comes from work well done, but most 
of all I want the order. 

I AM THE TRAVELING MAN 



44 / AMS 



I AM the home of freedom, the 
stronghold of democracy, and 
the cradle of liberty. 

— ^I have filled with gold the coffers 
of the world's oppressed. 

— I have flecked the sea with ships 
and filled the air and fields with 
warriors who will pay Lafayette's 
debt and make Bartholdi's dream 
come true. 

— Well may the bloody-handed de- 
spot tremble when his lash-driven 
vassals meet my Spartan sons 
who will leave a wake of broken 
scepters, trampled crowns and 
crumbled thrones. 

— I give my gold, my sons, my all, 
that bleeding France and mar- 
tyred Belgium go not unavenged 
and that the unborn may live in 
peace in all the world. 

I AM AMERICA 



/ AMS 45 



I 



AM the reassuring voice of Moth- 
er America to her noble Sons in 
the Gethsemane of war. 

— I am the heart-throb of a nation's 
sentiment when Hell is painted 
on the sky. 

— I am the echo of the answered 
prayer of Washington at Valley 
Forge, the awakened spirit of 
Lexington and Concord. 

— I am the golden shekels of opu- 
lence and the meager savings of 
poverty, burned together on the 
altar of righteousness from which 
shall rise Liberty to reign su- 
preme throughout a world of 
peace. 

— I am bullets and bread for a pha- 
lanx of Occidental Spartans be- 
fore whom the last despotism of 
earth shall fall to rise no more. 

I AM AN AMERICAN LIBERTY 
LOAN BOND 



46 / AMS 



I AM a Mother's Son, I am the pride of 
a family and part of a home. 
I love my life as you love yours. I 
am a youth in years and experience of 
life, yet I am a gambler betting the 
highest stakes that man can wager— 
my life. 

— ^If I win you win, if I lose I have lost 
all; the loss is mine, not yours, and 
there is a grieved mother, a saddened 
family and a broken home to which I 
can never return. 

— I ask only for the Godspeed and sup- 
port of my nation in return for laying 
upon the altar my all. 

— For my bravery and blood will you 
furnish bullets and bread? Will you 
pawn your shekels where I pawn my- 
self? Will you bet your gold while I 
bet my blood? 

—Will you hazard your wealth where I 
risk my life? I am the flower of a na- 
tion's manhood, the glory of a noble 
race and a tithe to the monster war. 

I AM THE BOY IN THE 
TRENCHES 



I 



/ AMS 47 



AM an angel of mercy with courage 
to minister or to die, as fall the cards 
of fate. 



— No martial music lauds my sacrifice, 
no glittering gold rewards the work 
of my tired hands, bathed in hero's 
blood, as I strip the gory khaki from 
the trembling, dying, forms of Moth- 
ers' Sons. 

— Branded with a crimson cross that 
marks me from the world apart, a 
woman with gentle hands and a heart 
of oak, a mother of the battlefields. 

— I whisper a prayer as I hold the hand 
of a first born man child as he passes 
through that dark and solemn vale 
beyond which no man has been al- 
lowed to look. 

— I hear the shrieking curse of pain and 
the gurgling groan of death, yet no 
cringing cowards have I seen within 
this awful place. 

— Dying, like they lived and fought, for 
democracy and God, that Hellians 
might not rule the earth beneath their 
iron heels. 

— Among the maimed and dying, fresh 
from the crushing jaws of Hell, do I 
pay my tithe to God and my tribute to 
the land that gave me birth. 
In memory of Gethsemane and the 
spirit of '76, I lay my life, my all, on 
the altar of my race. 

I AM THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 
NURSE 



48 / AMS 



I AM a husky peace loving young giant 
trying to settle a squabble among the 
other boys. I have begged and per- 
suaded and been biffed in the back for 
my pains. 

— While entreating one not to tear down 
the playhouse of the other he has 
kicked my own to atoms. 

— While petting the yelping canine of 
one the other has kicked my dog 
around, while soothing the skinned 
nose of a belligerent another has 
whacked my stone bruise and trampled 
on my sore toe. 

-^- While trying to stop a fight a rock has 
been shied into my back. 

— While pleading for peace between two, 
one of them has tried to persuade two 
of my friends to soak me from the 
dark. 

— Patience has ceased to be a virtue and 
is now a fault, and driven from the 
role of peacemaker then I must make 
war come up to the ideals of our im- 
mortal Sherman. 

I AM THE U. S. A. 



/ AMS 49 



I 



AM the wide stretch of earth 
from the Arkansas to the turbu- 
lent Rio Grande. 

— I am the far-flung realm of the 
great Lone Star. 

— ^I am a sunny Southern land. 

— I was bought with blood at the 
Alamo where valiant heroes fell, 
fighting like demons mad with 
pain, a story too sacred to tell. 

— From Liberty's cradle, the Alamo, 
Old Glory proudly waves while 
the sires who gave their lives for 
me are sleeping in unmarked 
graves. 

— Their sons are on the firing line 
in the thick of bloody fray ; these 
worthy sons of noble sires are 
making hell for the Huns today. 

— I come like a Roman mother to 
raise my eyes and pray, as I lay 
my sons and shekels on the altar 
of the U. S. A. 

I AM TEXAS 



50 / AMS 



I AM the cradle of Texas liberty, within my 
sacred confines peacefully repose the ashes 
of the heroes of a great commonwealth. 

— I am the resting place of Bonham, Bowie, 
Travis and Crockett who to Texas gave 
their all. 

— Within my domain the Alamo raises her 
sullen walls around which cluster memor- 
ies that are sacred to every Texan's heart, 
stolidly announcing that her portals have 
been drenched with martyr's blood. 

— I am the hallowed spot on which Texas' 
noble sons builded an altar upon which 
they laid their lives. 

— I am a friendly city from whose gates none 
need to turn, not even the cosmopolite, for 
here he will find one from whatsoever 
country or clime he may come. 

— Giant oaks to stately heights have grown 
since hardy pioneers upon this hill set high 
my citadel, and bade welcome friends from 
all the world. 

— I am a city of winding rivers, shimmering 
lakes, fragrant flowers and spreading 
palms. 

'Twas here in days now long agone 

That valiant Texans fell 

Fighting like demons mad with pain 

At the very gates of Hell. 

I AM SAN ANTONIO 



1 AMS 51 



I AM an oasis in the busy, tired world where the 
cosmopolite may find a fellow from whatsoever 
country or clime he may seek. Beside the 
Father of Waters and with the shimmering 
waves of lovely Ponchartrain breaking at my 
feet, in the hazy light of the Southern sun, amid 
the trill of song birds and the bewildering per- 
fume of giant roses, redder than wine and set 
on stems of bronze, I bask in a half-waking 
dream from which I pray I may never be rude- 
ly aroused. 

— I am the home of men, gentlemen to the man- 
ner born, whose superb speech and manly bear- 
ings suggest the Court of Charlemagne, and 
fair women of courtly grace, dainty of manner, 
refined of speech and with forms and faces fit 
for the studios of ancient Greece. 

— I am an historic city within whose sacred con- 
fines peacefully repose the ashes of a nation's 
noble dead, and not a spoiled child of the 
world's old age. 

— I am the nativity of geniuses to the strains of 
whose music a mad world has lent a listening 
ear and before whose canvasses connoisseurs 
have raved their admiration. 

— I am the alma mater of commercial sages whose 
winnings in the battle fields of finance have be- 
littled the fortunes of Croesus. 

— I am an earthern page upon which passing ages 
have written their records. Welcome is the 
stranger within my gates who finds me with 
more beauty than Venice, more culture than 
Athens, and more history than Rome. 

— Fate gave to the world but one of my kind. 

I AM NEW ORLEANS 



52 / AMS 



I AM the playground of a commonwealth; 
the Olympian season of a modern Athens 
and the cornucopia of an empire. 

— I am the beacon light of progress, the seis- 
mograph of success and the shop-window 
of that almost boundless domain whose 
symbol and synonym is the great Lone 
Star. 

— I am the towering Oak planted and nur- 
tured by the loving hands of that modest 
Pericles of Texas' noblest municipality 
whose memory stands in graven bronze 
and on the hearts of men. 

— I am a Phoenix risen from the ashes of 
Bonham, Bowie, Travis and Crockett. I 
am the fruits of a freedom bought with 
blood. 

— I am the industrial San Jacinto of Texas 
history. 

— I am the laurel wreath for the brows of 
gladiators who have fought with plow 
shares in arenas of golden grain and on 
fields of cotton blooms and waving corn. 

— I am a jubilee under the harvest moon, the 
gladsome season of a happy people. 

I AM THE TEXAS STATE FAIR 



/ AMS 53 



I 



AM a whimpering, shrinking 
coward, a curse to my race and 
disgrace to my fellow men. 

-No noble impulse ever thrilled my 
pitiful soul or awakened a respon- 
sive throb within my breast. 

-My heart knows neither charity 
nor sacrifice, and my handwork 
is for self alone. 

-I shirk duty when my country 
calls; I grip the shining shekels 
that are needed to staunch the 
blood flow of my fellows who 
stand at the cannon's mouth and 
give back promptly blow for blow 
where grim death reigns supreme. 

■I am a living monument to selfish- 
ness, greed and avarice. 

-I am an alien from God and a trai- 
tor to the land that gave me birth. 

I AM A SLACKER 



54 / AMS 



I 



AM a gilded puppet clad in purple 
and fine linen, posing as possess- 
ing a divine right with God, yet 
seeking an opportunity to murder 
a child, crucify a woman, rifle a 
caravan or steal a continent. 

-No claim to divinity is too high 
for my lying tongue and no crime 
too low for my bloody hands. 

-I am the slave driver of a nation 
whose inheritance is my accursed 
rule and murderous sword. 

-I have enslaved peasants for gold 
with which to turn the world into 
a hell and murder them by thou- 
sands to gratify my whims. 

-My wrongs to the weak have 
made the nations of earth fly at 
my throat. 

-I am a hunted beast standing 
alone save for the tottering weak- 
lings at my side who are not 
friends but vassals. 

-Soon I must reap the wage of sin, 
for I am the adversary of right- 
eousness, the enemy of truth and 
a curse to the world. 

I AM THE KAISER 



/ AMS 55 



I 



AM a ghoulish vulture that has hovered 
over every land and clime; my cursed 
hand has lain a blight on the ages. My 

record have I written with man's blood and 

woman's tears. 

-I have turned the laugh of happy child- 
hood into moans of grief and pain. 

-I have left the fragments of families to 
wander amid the gloom of desolation and 
death. At Marathon, Thermopylae and 
Gettysburg, where thousands lie in un- 
marked graves. 

-I made men fight and die like demons mad 
with pain at the very gates of Hell. 

-I have never brought comfort to the heart- 
broken, remedies to the afflicted or, food 
to the starving. 

-I have never turned a forest into a field of 
golden grain. I have never shown mercy 
for the defenseless, succor for the weak or 
help for the struggling. 

-My poisoned talons have ever grasped at 
the throat of man and sweeter to me than 
the purling of the brooklet or the voice of 
the songbird is the boom of the cannon 
and the groan of the dying. 

-I hate the peace whose prince in Gethse- 
mane atoned for mankind. 

-I am the enemy of happiness, prosperity 
and plenty. I am the champion of the 
curses of destruction, ruin and death. 

I AM WAR 



56 / AMS 



I 



AM the gift of the red man to 
his white brother, a spirit 
from the dream world. 

—I am the incense of peace. 

—I bring the chuckle of satisfac- 
tion to the poorest worker in 
his humble cot and pleasant 
reveries to the nabob in his 
gilded place. 

—I am the good fairy from the 
golden leaf of sunny fields. 

—I am the spirit medium through 
which man woos at the shrine 
of the muses. 

—I am the wings of Morpheus 
fanning into silence all the dis- 
cords of a tired mind. 

—I thrill the nerves, ease the 
troubled brain and steady the 
trembling hand. 

I AM EMPRESS NICOTINE 



I 



/ AMS 57 



AM a child of the modem day. My lineage extends 
neither to the Grecian battlefields nor the Roman 
foraim. 

-I am but a few years from my birth, yet I am the sub- 
ject of more printed pages than the French revolution. 
My missions on earth are as numberless as the sands 
of the sea. 

-I have met the mob and listened tO' the rabble. Man is 
as close to earth's furthest clime as he is to me. 

-I bring help to the distressed, physicians to the sick and 
comfort to the heartbroken. 

-I aid in the crime of the world. 

-I help to plan robberies, blackmail and murder. 

-I lend a listening ear alike to the philosophy of the 
sage and the piffle of the fool. 

-I hear and transmit the honeyed sentences of the lover 
and the caloric curses of the knave. 

-I am the peg on which Percy Doolittle may hang him- 
self for long periods of time while he whispers sweet 
nothings into the ear of Miss Gelsemine Laughinggas. 

-I transmit the goose giggles and chewing gum gyra- 
tions of the feminine specimen known to the wizards 
of human classification as the Bouvelard Pest. Into 
my face is blown the breath of rare perfumes, the odor 
of garlic and the aroma of "Forty rod barrel house." 

rMy ear is pelted with the vernacular of the Priest from 
the Temple and the wreck from the gutter, with the 
sterilized words of the great professor and with pigeon 
gibberish that reeks with spaghetti. 

-I hear with stolid indifference accounts of the world's 
most horrible holocausts, its greatest discoveries and its 
wonderful progress. 

-I listen to alleged jokes that were outlawed by the 
Grassville Minstrels in eighteen and sixty. 

-I am the friend of the deadbeat, the tool of the crook, 
and a Godsend to the modern world. 

I AM THE TELEPHONE 



58 / AMS 



I 



AM the feminine idler of a busy age. 
I am a silk beribboned, perfumed-soaked 
bundle of nothing. Although of the same 
sex and kind as those whose hands have 
rocked the cradle and ruled the world, I 
am like them as a broken reed is like a 
mountain oak. 

-I am a travesty on the womanhood of 
Edith Cavell, a slur on the name of Jose- 
phine, wife of Napoleon, and a disgrace to 
Mary, Mother of Christ. 

-I am as devoid of brain as a thief is of 
truth, yet I brought Henry the Eighth his 
shame and Napoleon his Waterloo. It was 
my type and kind that flocked as flies 
around the ulcer that festered in the heart 
of Rome before its awful fall. 

-With shortened tresses, carmined lips and 
shapely form I stand in the market place, 
seeking him of whom I may make a fool 
and be he a man weighted with the wisdom 
of years or an inexperienced youth matters 
not to me. 

-I am an indicator on the trend of mankind. 
I am of the sex that must preserve or de- 
stroy the home which is the foundation 
upon which our civilization must stand or 
fall. 

I AM THE FLAPPER 



I 



/ AMS 59 



AM the latest sucker on the trunk of the 
human race. My head is solid mahogany, 
my feet are driftwood on the sea of "Jazz" 

and my mind is the most complete vacuum 

known to science. 

-I am just as useful to the human race as a 
corkscrew is to a catfish. 

-My only trait of character is a well-devel- 
oped weakness for the waspy waisted, car- 
mine daubed flapper whose dream of a hero 
is the original of the collar advertisements. 

-Mentally I am a melancholy fluke ; it hurts 
my head to think and I could not figure a 
two per cent discount without closing up 
the office. 

-Compared to the hard rock drillers of O. 
Henry's time, who hewed habitations from 
virgin forests, used corn for food instead 
of drink and believed that a woman who 
could not make a cooking stove break the 
speed limit was disqualified; I glisten like 
a mail-order diamond in a Tiffany sun- 
burst. 

-I am the Beau Brummel of the barbershop, 
the sweet baby of the beauty parlor and 
the meal ticket of the manicurist. 

-Chide me not for my soft dome, it has been 
soaked in the wool alcohol concoctions of 
every hair tonic grafter from the heads of 
the rivers to the end of the earth. 

-I am a parasite, a cumberer of the ground. 

-I am the defective child of a degenerate 
race. 

I AM THE JELLYBEAN 



60 / AMS 



I 



AM a human parasite, a blood sucking 
vampire and a curse of the age. 
I am an unpunishable criminal. 

-I invade every walk of life from the 
beggar on the commons to the banker 
in his castle. 

-Forsaking the gun and the bludgeon 
for fine manners and guile I have dis- 
tanced my fathers as a daylight burg- 
lar in the marts of trade. 

-With shimmering trinkets I take the 
penny of the child ; clad in purple and 
fine linen I made Croesus a willing 
victim of a robbery at high noon. 

-I toil not, neither do I spin; the world 
is working for me. With oily tongue 
and words pleasant to hear I garner 
the meager shekels of the widow and 
the gold of the modern shylock. 

■^I nurse the gambling instinct of the 
populace and capitalize the frenzy of 
the mob. A fabled factory, a gushing 
well, a rich mine ; these are tools with 
which I mine pure gold from the ex- 
chequer of the fool. 

-I hoard not my gold, it is too easy to 
get. 

-I am a pleasant companion, a lavish 
spender and withal a good fellow. 

I AM THE GRAFTER 



/ AMS 61 



I 



AM your source of fond dreams, your foundation for 
air castles that pierce the blue dome of Heaven, and 
the greatest disappointment that ever came into your 
life. 

— I am the well-spring of fabled wealth from whose 
limpid depths you drew a stream of dream gold that 
belittled the fortunes of Croesus and afforded you a 
dream life of ease and pleasure far beyond Cleopatra's 
wildest fancy. 

— I am that for which the scrub woman hazards the last 
wage penny of her life of toil; I am that for which 
father mortgaged the home, and for which mother 
pawned her wedding ring. 

— I have dethroned the reason of hardened money chang- 
ers in the temples of finance and stolen the accumulated 
savings of years. 

—I have made nabobs of beggars, tramps of millionaires ; 
I have made the cards, the ponies and the wheat pit 
seem tame and childish. 

— I was brought into the world by the true personification 
of O. Henry's "Gentle Grafter," who believed it a crime 
to rifle a caravan and an honor to steal a continent. 

— I am one of your life's lessons taught by a finished 
tutor in the school of experience, for which you paid in 
cash, and though valueless in the marts of trade, I am 
worth whatever you paid for me in impressing on you 
the truth of the age-old axiom: "All is not gold that 
glitters." 

— Through half closed eyes I have brought you dreams 
of the primrose path on which you were a curled darl- 
ing of fortune's capricious hand. 

—I have masqueraded as a passport to the realms of 
opulence and luxury only to prove a counterfeit bank 
note when you needed me most. 

—I am the financial joke of the age. With a face value of 
a million American dollars you could not cash me for 
a thin dime in the most unsuspecting three-ball institu- 
tion between Skagway and Cape Horn. 

I AM YOUR OIL STOCK 



62 / AMS 



I 



AM a wrecker of lives, a thief of souls, 
and the curse of the ages. 
I have placed a crown of shame on 
the brow of innocence. 

■I have dulled the wits of genius, weak- 
ened the arm of the husbandman, and 
led my captives, shackled, to disgrace 
and to death. 

-Within me lurks the potent poison 
that sets men's brain on fire and goads 
them on to deeds and words of super- 
men, only in the end to drive them on 
to the madhouse where a thousand 
mocking demons with fiery javelins 
pierce their aching souls. 

-I am the subtle conqueror of honesty, 
the relentless foe of righteousness and 
the enemy of the home. 

-Within my limpid depths there lives 
the serpent whose poison fangs have 
pierced the flesh of the men of every 
age; but I am dying, slowly dying; 
outlawed by the Western World, I see 
the beginning of my end. 

I AM JOHN BARLEYCORN 



I 



/ AMS 63 



AM a curse as old as time. I have made 
honest men thieves, noble women courte- 
sans and snatched the last crumb of bread 
from the lips of a hungry child. 

— Not only is death the wage of him who 
dares to quaff my burning draughts, but I 
bequeath my cursed heritage to those who 
come after me. I taint the blood and steal 
the brain from three generations. 

— I am the poison flower on the primrose 
path where feet take hold on Hell and 
death is welcome to him from whose life I 
have taken toll. 

— I am the gilded chain with which mother's 
baby girl was led to the brothel and to 
shame. I am the beckoning demon that 
lures her son to where a self-inflicted bullet 
ends it all. 

— I exact my pound of flesh from poor and 
rich alike. I take home and friends, nor do 
I leave my victim until within my slimy 
clutch I hold his soul. 

— My pathway leads away from Him who in 
Gethsemane paid the greatest debt that 
mankind ever owed. 

— I throttle genius, curse righteousness and 
drown virtue in her own blood. Free the 
world? When I am classed with potent 
poisons, locked in iron vaults and babes 
within the cradle taught that man's worst 
curse is me! 

— I am a useless parasite, a blood-sucking 
vampire, a cancerous plague eating at the 
vitals of manhood. 

I AM ALCOHOL 



64 / AMS 



I 



AM the enemy of pain, a panacea for the 
ills of life and a curse to the human race. 
I lull to sweet sleep the tired brain, quell 
the turbulent nerves of unrest and steal 
the souls of men. 



— I am the price a demon pays for the virtue 
of woman and the honor of man. 

— With me the white clad nurse at midnight 
hour cools a fevered brow and turns an 
awful waking nightmare into a sweet 
dream of peace. 

— I keep life in a tortured frame for weary 
weeks only to drag honor from her high 
pedestal and reason from her throne. 

— I aid to victory the trained physician in 
battles with death, yet life's pathway is 
thickly dotted with plodding wrecks from 
whose lives I have taken toll. 

— My victims range from the priest in his 
temple to the felon in his cell; from the 
dizzy heights of fame to degradation's 
depths. 

— In the annals of crime my history is writ- 
ten in innocent blood. Strong men and 
noble women have bartered their souls for 
the one hour of peace that I bring. 

— I am God's blessing to the sufferer and 
hell's price of a soul. 

I AM MORPHINE 



/ AMS 65 



I 



AM only a memory, an empty dream, 
a has-been, a thing that was. 
I am a jitney's worth of comfort, 
cheer, and solace that has gone glim- 
mering into the past. 

-Once I reposed comfortably in the 
pocket of the nabob and in the blouse 
of the toiler. 

-I brought keen pleasure to the crying 
nerves of masculinity in every country 
and clime. 

-Amid the sweet incense that arose 
from my burning came poems and 
best sellers, scenarios and short stories, 
song hits and chemical formulas. 

-I took man to the land of dreams, I 
buried him in pleasing reveries and set 
at rest the carking, rebellious nerves 
that threatened to wreck him on the 
rocks of despond. 

-I am the anaesthetic that took the 
pain out of the Sunday paper, the rot- 
ten ball game and put pep into the 
punk paragraphs of the penny-a-liner. 

-The thoughts of me have kept the dea- 
con awake through the doctrinal ser- 
mon and made him unbelt at the pass- 
ing of the plate. 

-For a hundred years I softened the lot 
of mere man, but I am gone, I am in 
the scrap pile of things that were. 

■I am one of the fallen in the great 
world war. 

I AM THE NICKEL CIGAR 



66 / AMS 



I AM a bit of golden weed, a roll of silken 
parchment. I came from the land of the 
Aztecs beyond the Rio Grande. 

— I am the favorite theme of the wind-jam- 
ming reformer, the inexhaustible text of 
the penny-a-liner who, to eat, must fill his 
page. 

— I am the wind-mills to the modern Don 
Quixote, and the capstan around which are 
coiled the cords of hellish accusation by 
the mannish specimen of femininity who 
has no chickens or children of her own. 

— With my alleged evils the highbrow busy- 
body can bolster a pulpit, pack a house or 
enrage a mob and get a meal ticket for his 
pains. 

— When the blatant leatherlunger has worn 
threadbare "the modern dance," "the 
stage,'' and the dangers of the alcohol in 
buttermilk, I am the cardinal sin to which 
he may return and again comfort the sim- 
pering alarmists who are begging for a 
chance to weep over a ruined world. 

— I have cheered the hard-riding plainsman 
as both food and drink steeled him to urge 
the fagging steed another mile. 

— I have brought a tranquil hour to the desk 
slave, and a moment of enjoyment to the 
worker in the weltering heat and stinging 
cold. 

— I have nerved the hand of the fighting man 
at the cannon's mouth, brought comfort to 
his blood-drenched frame, and eased him 
over the Great Divide when he "went 
West." 

I AM THE CIGARETTE 



/ AMS 67 



I 



AM the Roman tribunal of a modem 
craft, a guild of wisdom born of ex- 
perience in which the wise men of a 
calling counsel together for the good 
of the giant and weakling, the worker 
and the sluggard, the sage and the 
fool. 

-I plead for but do not exact even sup- 
port from those for whom I toil. 

-I am a watchman on the wall guard- 
ing the interests of my constituents 
with the faithfulness of Horatius at 
the bridge. 

-My voice is heard in the forum of the 
Nation in behalf of those I represent. 

-My banner is altruism, "Live and Let 
Live," portrays the spirit of the Prince 
of Gethsemane. 

-Welcome alike to the fruits of my 
grilling toil are those within my ranks 
who work and those without who 
don't. 

•I am a fraternity of goodfellowship, a 
promoter of prosperity, and a stickler 
for the square deal. 

I AM THE N. A. R. D. 



POEMS 69 

A CHRISTMAS GREETING. 

Another milestone is passin' us 

As the long hard trail we ride. 

You an' me's gitten closer, ol* Pardner 

To the rimrock uv the great divide. 

Where the hoof prints pint one way, 
With no returning tracks, 
Where the herds are driftin* on, 
But none are comin' back. 

Me an' you hain't nigh so coltish 
An' gunhandy as we uster be; 
Age is creepin' slowly 
But shorely 'pon you an' me. 

My gun hand's gitten wobbly 

And my temper's coolin' down; 

The Prince uv Peace has shorely got me, 

Fer I smile instid uv frown. 

Here's a cheer fer your Christmas morning, 
And a hope that the years to cum 
Deal your hand frum the top, my good friend, 
'Til your work on this range is done. 

An' when God goes to cuttin' the cattle, 
May he herd you off to the right. 
To a range uv eternal sunshine, 
In a land where ther' haint no night. 

THE CHAP THAT LIVES NEXT DOOR 

I don't crave fame ner riches ner purple raiment fine. 
Hain't never been a hero ; jes' plain Bill Smith fer mine. 
Ain't hankerin' fer the lime light, jes' try in' to make shore 
That I deserve the friendship of the chap that lives next 
door. 

I mout win great distinction in parts that's fur away 
And maybe git right chesty at nice things strangers say. 
But deep down in my nater thar'll stick ferevermore 
A cravin' to be nabers with the chap that lives next door. 

He's the guy that knows me ; he sees me every day. 
'He knows my joys and sorrows, an' he's the man to say 
If I'm good er bad er indifferent at the surface or the core. 
»I hain't afraid if I stand right with the chap that lives 
next door. 



70 POEMS 

When the tongue of slander falls on me from age er 
fickle youth, 

I know that chap is standin' pat and tellin' uv the truth. 

I don't amount to a whisper in the world's mad rush and 
roar, 

.But may God help me to deserve the chap that lives next 
door. 

MY BOY 

There's a tawny headed urchin. 
Who's as gentle as a mule; 
The enemy of soap and water, 
Of salts and Sunday School. 

He leads a haughty bull dog 
Most everywhere he goes, 
A brindle pelted rascal 
With wrinkles on his nose. 

This lad is strong for football. 
And weak on 'rithmetic ; 
Readin' gets his nanny Goat, 
And writin' makes him sick. 

His voice is like a boiler shop. 
His face is free from care. 
He walks like a herd of beef steers 
When coming down the stairs. 

This lad is worth a million; 
He's full of grief and cheer, 
And all the pent-up wisdom 
Of eleven passing years. 

His Dad is standing steady, 
Be he grief or joy, 
His Dad is sticking with him. 
God bless him, he's my boy. 



THE ONE WOMAN 

There's a portly dimpled matron 
Whose smile keeps haunting me. 
Every time I close my eyes 
Her winsome face I see. 



POEMS 71 



Her hair like ripening chestnuts ; 
Her eyes a sombre grey, 
With the grey of those wild prairies 
That I knew in bygone days; 

When she a slender stripling 
Along the Brazos* shifting sands ; 
No steed too swift, no way too rough 
For this maid of the cattle lands. 

Her hair is just as brown today, 
Her eyes are just as grey. 
Her smile is just as "fetching" 
And her heart is just as gay. 

The hand that held the bridle rein 
And urged the pony on 
Is the hand that steals along my arm 
When the weary day is done. 

The tiny crow feet 'round the eyes 
That fill my heart with cheer 
Are the marks of rambling baby hands 
And the scars of flying years. 

But what's the use of soaring high 
Atop such lofty peaks. 
I wish she'd catch a fast train home, 
Gosh, she's been gone a week. 



TAKE ME BACK 
(After a Day on Broadway) 

Take me back to Sunny Texas, 
'Neath the Lone Star's silvery rays; 
Where the songbirds trill the gladness 
Of the golden autumn days; 

Where the cotton fields are browning 
And the Bobwhite calls his mate; 
Where the zephyrs and the moonlight 
Are a part of man's estate ; 

Where stalk the dauntless spirits 
Of the heroes of the South, 
Sainted martyrs of the Alamo, 
Who died at the cannon's mouth. 

Take me back to Sunny Texas, 
'Neath the peaceful harvest moon. 
There beside the shimmering Brazos 
With its rocks and sandy dunes; 



72 POEMS 



Where once there glowed the campfires 
Of the trail herds going North, 
Where youth with prideful manhood 
Into life was setting forth. 

Let me live my life in Texas, 
In the land where heroes stood, 
Not bought with gold and silver ; 
Paid for with Spartan blood. 

Let me gaze on those wide prairies 
Where the stillness is of God. 
When the final call is sounded 
Let me sleep beneath its sod. 

THE DRAMA OF LIFE. 

They say that life's a drama 

And all the world's a stage ; 

That the cast is the moving million, 

And each act a passing age. 

When we face life's footlights 
And fight and strive 'gainst odds, 
We must do the best that's in us 
For our critics are the gods. 

Will we all star? No, no never. 

We must work though we stand afar — 

A little glint in the firmament 

From out which there shines a star. 

A property man on the stage of life 
May make success or mar. 
For without the work of lesser lights, 
There can surely be no star. 

Life gives us what we pay for. 

In work and toil and tears, 

The star that gleams from the firmament, 

Is the slave of yester years. 

She who thrills a thousand hearts. 

With word or note or step, 

Is the slave who toiled through night's noontide. 

While the plodding million slept. 



POEMS 73 

He who holds the rabble bound 

With the mastery of his art, 

Is the slave who paid the price of the gods 

And earned lifers leading part. 

May we each be true in the part assigned, 
And hear the censor's call 
Without regret in retrospect 
As life's last curtain falls. 



ONE FOR THE IRISH. 

In a bar three Jews were drinking, 
Making merry with much glee. 
Pat was broke, but longed to join them 
In their mellow gladsome spree. 

Another round of drinks was ordered, 

Amid the flow of Hebrew lore. 

Pat said : "There's a thousand Jews where I wurruk, 

And I wish ther wuz a thousand more." 

"Have a drink Pat?" said Ikey. 

"Thra fingers of Scotch af ya plaze," 

And they drank to the health of old "Oirland," 

And were loud in Erin's praise. 

"Another for Pat," said Looey, 

"Three fingers, or make it four." 

Pat said : "There's a thousand Jews where I wurruk, 

And I wish there wuz a thousand more." 

Jacob signaled the barman 

To fill the glasses again. 

They drank to Pat and the Shamrock ; 

Sweetest of flowers and greatest of men. 

"Vere do you vurk?" said Looey; 

"Pray tell us ver it's at." 

"In the Jewish simetary 

Is where I wurruk," said Pat. 



MEN OF THE OLD WEST 

As I sit here dreamin', 

Smokin' with the twilight drawin' near, 

I am thinkin' of the fellers 

Down the trail of by-gone years. 



74 POEMS 



Vm thinkin' of the pardners 
That I used to know and love, 
Some that's in the earthly round-up, 
And some that's gone above. 

In them days back in the eighties, 
The cattle country's pride. 
Was "four square men," square shooters, 
Who done the right or died. 

Hell bustin' but God fearin' 
Was the chaps I used to know 
In the high grass cattle country, 
In them days of long ago. 

Hard ridin' wind tanned Gringoes, 
Who knowed and done the right, 
And who never come out second 
In any kind of fight. 

They believed that God was up there, 
A lookin' down on earth. 
And creditin' each feller 
Accordin' to his worth. 

There warn't no crime waves them days, 
They was lookin' for the scamps 
With a bale of rope and two days off 
They straighten out the camp. 

When a rustler got to burnin' brands. 
Or stickin' up the stage, 
'Fore long they found him hangin' high, 
Way out among the sage. 

Where'd we get this breed of cowards, 
Who've everything but sand, 
Who go robbin' helpless women 
And kids throughout the land? 

Are these Hellians native cattle? 
Do they b'long in this here range? 
Where'd they git their streak of yaller? 
Where'd they git their coat of mange? 

Where's the modern Vigilantes? 
Do they ever comb the range, 
With a brace of talkin' hog legs 
To bring about a change? 



POEMS 75 



I'm just wishin' for the fellers 
That I used to know and love, 
Them that's in the earthly round-up, 
And some that's gone above. 



WHEN A MAN'S A MAN 

A man's a man when he's square an' honest 
With both his feller man an' God. 
Ridin' herd on golden millions 
Er carrying uv a lowly hod. 

Tain't the gent with cattled hills 
An' yellowbacks in sheaves, 
Who won his game by markin' the cards 
Er storin' aces in his sleeves. 

A man's a man when he stands up stiddy 
When life's a wild stampede 
Doin' his best to mill the cattle 
Shy on words but a gent uv deeds. 

He's a man when he's kind to bosses 
Pityin' the sore back and the lame 
Rememberin* thet the toughest buckers 
Is the best when they are tamed. 

He's a man when he smiles and chuckles 
When on tens he's bet his roll 
'Gainst a hand uv four bald eagles 
That the other feller holds. 

He's a man in the city marts 

Er in the untamed wilds 

When he'd ruther bring fight to the face uv a 

gunman 
Than fear to the lips uv a child. 

He's a man uv God's own makin' 
From the ranks uv real men 
When in duty he draws the noose 
Erround the neck of a friend. 

A man's a man when he stands upright 
Jes' doin' the best he can. 
Open-faced, four-square to the world, 
That's when a man's a man. 



76 POEMS 

TERBACKER SMOKE 

Heck Rogers was a Flosifer 

In the ranges long ago, 
He alius smoked a com cob pipe 

Afore he*d say yes or no. 

Bout any question thet cum up 
Fer decidin' which wuz right, 

And Heck wuz plumb correct 
In a peacefest er a fight. 

He uster say, "You might git shot 
While smokin' uv the weed 

But I take a chanst uv a whiff er two 
Afore I draw a bead. 

The game uv life we're playin hard 
Is like a pig thet's in a poke 

An' ther hain't no erect decisions made 
Without terbacker smoke. 

He alius smoked the ol* cob pipe 

An' gazed in retrospect, 
Afore he tied a hangman's knot 

Erround a rustler's neck. 

Heck wus a serious feller 
Who mostly never joked, 

Ner cum to no conclusions 
Not until he hed smoked. 

One day a rustler drilled him 

A thirty-thirty hole, 
We seed him pitch an' reel 

Then off his hoss he rolled. 

We raised him frum a pool uv blood 
And ast him wuz he hurt, 

He pinted to the ol' cob pipe 
In the pocket uv his shirt. 

We loaded her with hurley leaf 
An' ast him could he ride. 

He smoked the pipe to the last hot whiff 
Then laid it down and died. 



POEMS 77 
TO MY SON. 

I love you, my lad, my fair-haired boy, 

In spite of your noise and your din. 

I love the soiled hand that holds on to Dad 

And the face that's unsullied by sin. 

I know that the years must soon bring care 

And pain and trouble to you. 

May you stand like a Spartan, staunch at your post, 

Ever daring your duty to do. 

I cannot teach you life, my Son, 
From experiences of my own. 
For you must learn to sail life's seas 
At the wheel of a ship of your own. 

If youth could learn from age. 

The lessons age has learned, 

Then experience would not keep school 

And trouble to joy would turn. 

Soon you must stand at the helm of a ship. 
On the treacherous sea of life ; 
And weather the gales and pilot your ship 
Amid the winds of storm and strife. 

The world don't care a rap or a pin 
For the storms you had or the sort. 
The question they ask and an answer they want- 
Did you bring your ship into port? 

I dare not pray that you won't have storms, 
Or wish you a life of ease, 
♦For not a ship is plowing the main 
That hasn't struggled in heavy seas. 

I dare not hope that there won't be rocks 
Off the coast of shores untrod; 
But man your ship like a sailor true 
And leave the rest to God. 

Be loyal my boy, to the pal at your side, 
And laugh at the gale's mad snort. 
It's helmsman that's true to his craft and his crew 
That brings a ship into port. 



78 POEMS 

TO THE BRIDE 

Here's to the bride of the roseate dream 
Of a cruise down the river of years 
In a flower laden boat o'er shimmering waves, 
With never a doubt or a fear. 

Bon voyage, young bride of the roseate dream, 
May the helmsman of your craft be true 
As the steel to the magnet, as the compass to the pole 
May your helmsman be to you. 

Not alone a pilot through the sunshiny day. 

When life is a gladsome song, 

But who stands at the wheel when the storm's fury 

breaks, 
With a heart of oak through the wild night long. 

May you lash your hearts together as one 
And laugh at the gale's wild snort, 
It's the crew that's loyal each to each 
That brings a ship to port. 

As you sail this sea, be it stormy or fair, 
May you never do less than your best 
*Til the ship heaves into that haven of peace, 
In the land-locked harbor of rest. 

TOAST TO THE KAISER 

Here's to the crafty head 

Of the Hohenzollern realm 

Who would steer the world on the sea of time 

From the Hohenzollern helm. 

May his life be spared for ages 
And filled with mortal dread, 
Until all the curses he has earned 
Are heaped upon his head. 

May he lean upon a bed of thorns 
That's wet with Belgian tears ; 
That white plague bugs may bore his lungs 
For just one thousand years. 

May in troubled dreams, his fiendish deeds, 
Come trooping back to him ; 
May the cry of starving Belgian babes 
Remind him of his whims. 



POEMS 79 

May the sea give up its martyred dead, 
May solemn death bells toll. 
May each into a demon turn 
To torture his quaking soul. 

May from the spirit world 
Come the white clad murdered nurse, 
To flaunt in his shameful face 
The Red Cross and her curse. 

May his victims dance in fiendish glee. 
And curse his hateful name. 
While a T. B, strangling, choking cough 
Racks his fevered frame. 

May no physician of kindly face. 
Nor nurse that's deft of hand, 
E*er come anear this human wreck 
To lend a helping hand. 

May the bugs gnaw on for the thousand years. 
For once or twice or thrice ; 
For he is worse, ten thousand times. 
Than the mob that murdered Christ. 



THE DRUGGIST 

In the field of pharmaceutics, 
The pillist labors night and day. 
Rendering service to the millions. 
As they pass on life's highway; 
He's the Nation's burden bearer — 
Faithful valet to the mob, 
And his wage for ceaseless service 
Is great honor and a job. 

On the wall the gilded parchment 
Tells how Druggist William Shaw 
Is a graduate in pharmics 
And a keeper of the law. 
To the ornate mystic Latin 
Alma Mater's signed her name 
Attesting William's fitness 
For the pill and powder game. 

Near it hangs a sheepskin. 

By William much adored, 

A gold stamped bit of record, 

It's his clearance from the Board — 



80 POEMS 

That permits aforesaid William 
To toil from early morn till late 
Selling stamps and running errands 
Anywhere within the State. 

In his human suffering parlor 
You may use his telephone, 
Borrow his hammer and pliers. 
Or anything else he owns. 
No use to even say "Thank You" — 
He's the martyr of the age, 
And loves such impositions 
As make other merchants rage. 

Will the druggist ever wake up 
And make the rabble pay 
For the service they filch from him 
As they pass on life's highway? 
Will he ever get his mind on the dollar 
That he'll need for declining years — 
Or will the half-hearted "Thank You" 
Be the pay of his peers? 

May the money bug sting him in the bonnet- 
May he sit up straight and take note 
That at least for a thousand years 
The druggist has been the goat. 

A DRUG STORE ROMANCE 

She was a queen of the modern day, 
She thrilled the passers by. 
Her shape brought men straight to her side, 
Her form caught every eye. 

He was a lad of stolid build 

Whose smile was like a song, 

He fondled her tr^appings and squeezed her arm 

Throughout the whole day long. 

Together they stood through the summer days, 
This lad and his wonderful lass, 
Smiling and heckling and flirting 
With the mob that was surging past. 

Not jealous was he, not jealous was she, 

Of the rabble to the left and right, 

He stuck by her side through the long, hot day 

And often half of the night. 



POEMS 81 



When autumn came with falling leaves 
And winds that sigh and whine, 
This lad went away to the college town 
And left her far behind. 

To wrestle with pharmic problems deep, 
With chemics and materia-med 
She did not sigh one single time 
Nor wish that she was dead. 

He did not write, nor phone, nor wire 
To her whom he left behind. 
Such doings would have been foolish 
For she was deaf and dumb and blind. 

Let me explain, dear reader, to you, 
Before you take the count. 
He was just a soda squirt 
And she a soda fount. 



THE CAMOUFLAGE 

We spy a poem nowadays. 
Of Epic mark and brand. 
That lauds a hero to the skies. 
As through the lines we scan. 

Through Feudal halls, o'er Cactus Plains, 
The author leads us on. 
In forests deep, on mountain heights. 
He pours his soul in song. 

We love his hero with a heart 
That dares and banters fate. 
Until we find that we've been worked 
By an advertising fake. 

He plays the gamut of our lives. 
But makes us sore and ill 
When he says the only thing to take 
Is Pugley's Purgative Pill. 



A DRUGGIST TO HIS WIFE 

Here's to a face like the sunshine. 

Here's to eyes like the dew ; 

Here's to my sweetheart, girl of my dreams ; 

Dear heart, here's to you. 



82 POEMS 

Sweet is the smile that comes to me now, 
Adown the river of years, 

From a sweet girlish face that haunts me always, 
And blesses me with comfort and cheer. 

Here's to the enchantress who holds in her hands 
The chains that make me a slave; 
Here's to the woman who fights by my side, 
And helps me life's battles to brave. 

Not a queen of pink teas from the social stampede. 
Not a beauty o'er whom the world raves, 
But a queen of creation whom God made to be 
First at the cradle and last at the grave. 

While I toil long hours through the noontide of night. 
As the night birds trill and weep, 
Like an eagle she watches over two tousled heads. 
And four childish hands that sleep. 

While I toil through the night in the still, silent room. 

To cool some fever-scorched brow, 

Her spirit is with me, her hand on my arm. 

Her face I can see even now. 

She rocks a cradle and makes a home, 

Far from the maddening whirl. 

And the hand that rocks that cradle, thank God, 

Is the hand that rules my world. 

Here's to the girl of the years that have flown. 
To the woman who gladdens my life. 
Here's to the queen of home's domain. 
My mistress, my sweetheart, my wife. 



A TRIBUTE 
(To Arthur Skillern) 

Called from the fields at mid-day. 
Called in the prime of life; 
Called to the realms of the great beyond. 
Called from toil and strife. 

Stilled is the brain of a genius, 
Stilled is the hand of a friend. 
Stilled is the great throbbing heart 
That beat for all manner of men. 



POEMS 83 



Unafraid he answered the summons, 
Undaunted he crossed the dark stream; 
Fear was no part of his nature, 
His passing an untroubled dream. 

He saw the better side of mankind. 
He was conscious of joys imtold; 
As he watched life's brilliant sunset 
Turn the ocean's blue to gold. 

May we cherish and revere his memory 
To our life's Sun's dying ray; 
May his life be an inspiration 
To you and to me today 



TO THE C. V. D. A. 

While veterans of the years agone 
Are gathered 'round the board, 
Let none who trod the path of years 
His reminiscence hoard. 

Today the friends of yester years 
Are gathered once again 
To mingle smiles, to spin a yam. 
To clasp a friendly hand. 

May good cheer reign in every heart. 
Be unconiined the joy; 
May time turn back in its restless flight 
And make each man a boy. 

I would that I could sit today, 
A guest at friendship's shrine^ 
And hear our "edgewise" fill the air 
With stock yard salve sublime. 

But fate rules nay, it cannot be — 
Too many miles between — 
Here's my best to fraters all; 
I am better heard than seen. 

May Heaven's goodly blessings 
Rest on each silvering head 
With its cheers that cheer the living 
And its tears for noble dead. 



84 POEMS 

THAT ROUND-UP IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE. 

I've seed a lot uv round-ups 
An' they're nothin' new to me, 
But the liveliest one I've been to 
Wuz in Memphis, Tennessee; 

Where pill rustlers frum three ranges 
Ganged around in gladsome glee. 
An' tied their pintos to the hitch rack 
In Memphis, Tennessee. 

Thar beside the Dad uv Waters 
We'd a happy bone dry spree 
An' I'm doffin' uv my Stetson 
To Memphis, Tennessee. 

Thar wuz folks frum Mississippi, 
Frum Arkansas, an* me, 
An* a bimch uv home ranch thoroughbreds 
That lived in Tennessee ; 

They throwed us in the big corral 
An* it wuz a sight to see 
Us rompin' 'round the Chisca 
In Memphis, Tennessee. 

We talked uv range conditions. 
Of war on land and sea. 
And the price uv pills an' powders 
In Memphis, Tennessee. 

Ever feller jest said "Howdy," 
An' now how do you be? 
Never seed sich a friendly burg 
As Memphis, Tennessee. 

The ladies wuz jest charmin'; 
And smilin', hully gee; 
I know I never will fergit 
That Memphis, Tennessee. 

I'm feelin' kinder lonesum, 
I'm sad and blue today 
But when I cash in I hope I go 
To Memphis, Tennessee. 



POEMS 85 

A ROUND-UP IN NEW AWLEANS 

The big round up is comin*. 

Soon you an' me again 

Will mix up with the big herd 

Beside the Ponchartrain. 

Dope hustlers from pill pastures 

On September day sixteen 

Will be millin' around the Grunewald 

Down in New Awleans. 

Thar beside the Dad uv Waters, 
In this sunny Southern range, 
Will be the gringoes from Montany 
Sayin' "Fill 'em up and keep the change." 
Thar's the chap from Minnesoty, 
With his gun mit on his bean, 
Shaking ban's and saying "Howdy" 
Down in New Awleans. 

They'll be thar from Cincinnatty, 
Frum Cleveland an' from Chi. 
They'll hit the trail from Frisco, 
Across the desert dry. 
A brace of han's from Boston 
Will bid farewell to beans 
An' graze awhile on lobsters 
Down in New Awleans. 

Thar'll be long horns thar frum Texas 
Thet once was pow'ful damp, 
Who'll pass up the sody fountains 
Like a pay train leaves a tramp. 
Thar'll be fellers thar from Kansas, 
An' North Dakoty will be seen. 
An* ol fren' Al frum Iowa, 
Will be in New Awleans. 

Cunnel Saux, uv of the Grunewald, 

Won't hev much to say 

'Ceptin' "Here's yer chuck and coffee" 

Three times every day. 

Thar'll be viands pow'ful fittin' 

An' coffee that's a dream. 

Loosen up yo' belt and waist band 

Afore you start to New Awleans. 

Thar'll be bevies uv fair ladies 
Smilin' like a newborn day. 
Mothers, sweethearts, sisters 



86 POEMS 



Uv the great N. A. R. D. 
Come an* git acquainted 
With Columbia's queens — 
They'll be pow'ful glad to see you 
Down in New Awleans. 

Thar'll be business in the sessions, 

An' yarns at night an' noon, 

As a burr-head bell hop passes 

Pagin* Mr. Huhn. 

Get out yo' swaller tailed regalia, 

Com' and brush yo' bean, 

For that's goin' to be some party 

Down in New Awleans. 

If you hear the bands a-tootin* 

Like playin' for their lives, 

Don't go and git excited — 

It's just Arkansaw arrived. 

If you hear the rebel yell, 

Long an' loud an' mean. 

That's Harry Mayer from Memphis, 

Bringin' Tennessee to New Awleans. 



THE OKLAHOMA ROUND-UP 

There's goin* to be a round-up 
Of the pill hounds of the state 
In Oklahoma City, 
Now don't forgit the date. 

On the 'leventh day of April, 
In nineteen twenty-two. 
Pill hustlers from the ranges 
Will be lookin' 'round for you. 

Don't be a pesky piker, 
Come on an* let 'cm see 
That you're among the big mob 
A millin* 'round the Lee. 

There's goin' to be tall doin's 
'Round the Huckins fer three days, 
Joe's boardin* house will be full — 
Grab off your bunk today. 



POEMS 87 



It*s goin' to be some party, 
From nuts plumb back to soup, 
High Speed Caldweirs range boss 
And he swings a wicked loop. 

Git in among the cattle 
And listen to these chaps 
Sayin', "Hell's broke loose in Enid 
And Durant's on the map." 

Hear Shack, the noisy rascal, 
Git an earful of his jaw, 
The wild man from Wynnewood, 
Beside the Washita. 

And thar*s that Mister Pullen 
From Muskogee in the hills, 
Head gunman of the outfit 
That's roUin' Oklahomy's pills. 

Thar'l be ladies powful purty. 
Jest modest like and sweet, 
Fer Oklahomy has 'em 
That the world can't beat. 

We will trip the light fantastic 
With Oklahoma ladies fair, 
When the nervous wailin' fiddle 
Comes a creepin' through the air. 

The way we'l toddle to the trombone 
Will be a powful sight, 
We'll be steppin' the jazzars 
Through the noontide of night. 

Close up the joint and beat it 
Whatever else you do. 
On the 'leventh day of April, 
Nineteen twenty-two. 



THE PRICE OF SUCCESS 

EVERY desirable achievement has its price. Every 
step forward costs effort. The chap who said, 
"There is no excellence without gr^eat labor," was 
not an amateur in the game of life. The man who said, 
"Eternal vigilance is the price of success," had cut the 
cards in the great game until he knew whereof he spoke, 
for verily no man was ever born with this much wisdom. 
Such philocophy comes only from those who have had the 
tutorship of necessity, that grim teacher who is dean of 
the school of experience in which not only fools but even 
the wise must learn the hard lessons of life. In fact, 
yve are mostly fools until we go through the hardships 
that are thickly strewn along the road to success. Suc- 
cess is not a stationary attainment; it is forever mov- 
ing away from its pursuers, and its luring call of work, 
work, comes with every waking moment and in dreams. 
The amassing of a million dollars may not mean success. 
The million that means success is the earned million that 
^ame little at a time through unceasing vigilance and 
hard work, and not the million that came accidentally 
when fate was loafing on the job. 

Eternal vigilance and hard work will put the poorest 
business on this continent into pay dirt as a profit-maker. 
Eternal vigilance is head work. There are many better 
pitching arms in the big leagues than the twirling wing 
of Christy Mathewson, but greater heads there are none. 
Success in business is a big game that works head and 
hands to full capacity. Hands cannot win without head 
work. Head will never score working alone. Brilliant 
ideas are born only to die in an unsystematized business 
that needs arranging from the curb to the alley. The 
store that looks like first money in a clean-up contest will 
never get anywhere if the want book and the advertising 
are overlooked. Every business that is approaching suc- 
cess must have at least one man whose judgment is 
supreme. He is a kind of a court of last resort. He has 
observed, worked and toiled. No detail has escaped his 
eagle eye or his lightning powers of discernment. He 
has seen things happen and things that have happened 
once do not have to happen again to remind him of the 
effect that comes from a certain cause. Once in a great 

89 



90 THE PRICE OF SUCCESS 

factory on whose pay roll were thousands of men, with 
many experts and each supposed to possess all the infor- 
mation that went with his job and to be able to cope with 
any situation that might arise, it happened that the belt 
on a big machine was slipping and the operator of the 
machine did everything he knew to do, to no avail. The 
master mechanic of the plant was called and exhausted 
his collection of tricks of the trade, including the pouring 
of sticky belt dressing on the belt to make it hold the 
pulleys, but it continued to slip. After all had given up 
in despair, they went to the private office of the "Old 
Man," who had established the factory more than thirty 
years ago. The problem that had baffled the expert was 
laid before him and he solved it in two minutes ; in three 
words he said, "tighten the belt." It matters not how 
small the business nor how large, there must be "an old 
man" (or a young one) who knows things and holds him- 
self personally responsible for everything that happens 
and never makes an excuse when things go wrong or 
takes credit when they go right. No business ever suc- 
ceeded where nobody carried responsibility. How many 
successful business men could you find in the whole 
world who would buy a business, employ enough clerks 
to operate it, and go away and leave it expecting to suc- 
ceed? Success depends mainly on the man. Some men 
would arrive at success in spite of all the obstacles that 
can be piled into their paths. The man who succeeds 
must pay the price. He must play the game for blood. 
He must not muff the grounders, beef at the umpire or 
play to the grandstand. Anytime he takes his gun eye 
off of the works a long fly will slip out of his mit and 
old "Compet" across the street puts one by for a home 
run. In "eternal vigilance" eternal means what it says. 
Not semi- weekly or every now and then,- but every 
minute. The chap who thinks he has bought success 
and the goods are not delivered, did not pay for it. The 
money was not on the mahogany. He mistook eternal 
for occasionally. He loafed at the plate until the umpire 
called two and swiped at the third one, and missed it 
seven feet. I call to mind a hot-house confection who 
smokes, swears and wears men's clothes, who thought 
he had a half-Nelson on success. He blew up recently, 
and when the smoke had cleared away it was found that 
he owed various firms scattered along from Augusta to 
Galveston a matter of $28,000.00 for drug store mer- 
chandise that a burglar would not have moved back 
into the store if he found them on the curb. This 
lad was not allowed to succeed. He was sandbagged by 



THE PRICE OF SUCCESS 91 

environment. He has a good heart inside of him, and if 
his heritage had been poverty, success would have been 
his. 

The old birds of the pill game would have held him 
up as a shining example of the man who whipsawed 
fate and won in spite of hardships and a muddy track if 
he had only been born poor. His old man was too strong 
with the bank parchment when Willie was being rubbed 
into condition for his life's work in a college of phar- 
macy. He propagated and grew an idea that the big 
thing in the knowledge works was to put a large-size 
crimp in father's standing at the First National. He 
buckled down and boned in school sometimes, when he 
was not too busy passing out the coin and got away with 
the pure white lambskin with the gold freckle down in 
the corner. Father got a bill for the damage, the figures 
of which looked like the number on a Rock Island coal 
car. The invoice was for clothes, books and laboratory 
apparatus, with enough incidentals to pay for the college 
campus at the rate of a hundred bucks the front foot. 
Father merely groaned and asked for exchange on New 
York. The bank clerk thought he had bought an ocean 
liner or a railroad. When Willie fell off the three-forty- 
five limited, father was there to take a look at his Golden 
Calf. The old gentleman looked at him with one of those 
long, searching glances that he was always wont to be- 
stow on a likely-looking piece of real estate that in a few 
years would grow a crop of installment-plan bungalows 
that would pay seven hundred per cent profit. Now 
father had sat in where it took gold eagles by the shovel 
full to stay and had these beaten to a whisper. He had 
put thirty to one on a pony that died on the track with 
slow fever. He was an inexperienced man at coming 
loose from coin in hunks. But as he gazed on Son he 
classified him as the most expensive luxury he had ever 
tried to maintain. As he thought of him and looked at 
him his Daddy Nature softened and his affections got 
mushy. He said to himself: "Ain't he my boy? Ain't 
he the son of his little mother? Didn't he bring home the 
bacon? Ain't he got a sheepskin from the college and 
clearance from the state board? Will I let him go out 
and fight fate for success like I did? Not on your petri- 
fied likeness. By the eternal heck, I never piked and I 
won't commence it now. I'll buy him a drug store with 
gold fixtures and a private office." The latter decision 
was the bomb that sent Willie's chances of success Hades- 
ward. Father bought the store and Willie bought every- 
thing that was for sale by the entire drug trade. It was 
the old story, with the sheriff in the last act. It took 



92 THE PRICE OF SUCCESS 

Willie just two years to erase his John Henry from Brad- 
street's book of batting averages and give the creditors 
the sandbag square on the bean. Willie did not intend 
to do it, but he could have steered an ocean liner across 
the Atlantic just as easily as he could pilot the big store 
with the big expense account toward success. In paying 
for success money is not a legal tender. Grilling experi- 
ence, bloody perspiration and sleepless nights are some 
of the things exacted of the man who would burn his 
John Henry into the exclusive scroll. 

Really successful pharmacists in most cases began 
with a sink full of unclean vials in the tender years of 
childhood, and by putting every moment that can be 
spared from sleep to the task of getting information on 
the game, finally in the afternoon of life are able to retire 
from the tile and spatula and spend the gloaming finding 
out what has happened in the world during their exile. 
They know the great Remington, but never heard Tolstoi. 
They are familiar with Wilhelm Bodemann, but not wise 
to Elbert Hubbard. The sweet-faced bride of former years 
now a gray-haired matron, on a Sunday morning in spring 
leads him into a church where a kindly faced minister 
extols the joys of the great beyond and the beauty of 
the golden city; and in the daze he is catching himself 
wondering what rent the best corners will bring, and if 
the cigarette tax is the same in heaven as in San Antonio. 

Alfred Henry Lewis told the whole story when he 
made his *'01d Cattleman" say: "Success in life hain't in 
holdin' a good hand, but playin' a poor one well." I have 
seen more wrecks that were attributable to bad buying 
than to any other one cause. Many a little drug store 
would be a miniature mint if the proprietor could be sat- 
isfied with his own profit instead of trying to get the 
jobber's profit also by buying more goods than he needs 
to save a small discount. A small retailer is beginning 
to get in the game when he learns to buy a gross of 
Sal Hepatica for eight dollars instead of paying ninety 
for it. 

This wonderful feat is accomplished by buying each 
dozen with the same eight dollars with which he bought 
the first dozen. A jobber's two per cent each month 
beats a manufacturer's five, once a year. Of course, there 
are several thousand other things to do in the retail drug 
business besides the buying. Any man in the business is 
entitled to pull a bonehead occasionally, but must not 
pull the same one twice. There is no primrose path that 
leads to success. Primrose paths lead elsewhere; espe- 
cially is this true of the retail pill game. Success never 



THE PRICE OF SUCCESS 93 

fluctuates in the market. Fate is a square dealer and sells 
it to all of us at the same price. Sometimes it leaves us 
with flighty heads and nervous hands, but when we win 
there is a sweet satisfaction in knowing that we beat the 
game. Every man in the game has more brain than he 
uses, more ability than he shows, and is capable of more 
effort than he spends. Every successful man must study 
his business if he is to know it. He may know it today, 
but he must keep his eye on the signals or won*t know 
it tomorrow. Every bit of power, both mental and physi- 
cal, that the human dynamo will generate and apply is 
THE PRICE OF SUCCESS. 



THE FABLE OF SPARTICUS 
JAWSMITH, M. D. 

(Same being a story o£ how a bud from the Aescula- 
pian knowledge works put one by the populace until he 
could grow the regulation hirsute handle bars of the pro- 
fession and save up enough of the filthy lucre to pay for 
a firstclass kit of burglar's tools for jimmying the diag- 
nostic time lock and breaking into the hiunan carcass. 
While his pedigree and track record as a practitioner was 
liberally sprinkled with funerals he sat steady in the boat, 
stroked the whiskers, took frequent unkind pokes at the 
Great American Fraud and always got away with the 
money because he belonged.) 

Once, out in a tank municipality, where the local 
stops to kick out a couple of mail sacks filled with the 
Semi- Weekly Cabbage Leaf and gets the eggs, there lived 
in marital peace, two simple yokels with glittering fore- 
heads and passions for good eating tobacco. This well- 
broken matrimonial team lived together to keep from 
mussing up two perfectly good houses, and to rear ac- 
cording to orthodox Presbyterian usage a son, Sparticus. 

The posterity was christened Sparticus "just because," 
and then from a glimpse at the youngster it did not look 
like it would make much difference what he was called. 
The parental duet who registered in the Yap Division 
every time they said a word, did not know whether 
Sparticus was the tough scrapper who kept the bridge in 
the brave days of old or the latest addition to the 
catalogue of the International Harvester Company. They 
were inclined to think the latter was the case, and some- 
times feared that the offspring might be confused with 
the newest style of gasoline engine. 

When Sparticus, of the plebeian parentage, was eigh- 
teen summers from the nursery, he could repeat the mul- 
tiplication table backward and had teased his hair into 
laying down the wrong way, the humble progenitors 
were sore perplexed as they wanted Son to cut a large 
gash in life, either as a barrister, pulpiteer or "dawkter." 
As to whipsawing the juries they decided he would never 
be able to deliver the goods; as a preacher he did not 
look the part, owing to the fact that his eyebrows were 
too close to his eyes. They finally conspired together in 

95 



96 FABLE OF SPARTICUS JAWSMITH, M. D, 

packing his things into one of those rural war-bags that 
fastens with a strap across each end. They hied him 
away to the city, where he matriculated in the Gangrene 
College of Physicians and Surgeons. 

He was an apt student; that is, he was apt to fall 
asleep in the middle of a lecture even when the big wind 
of the knowledge brewery was spilling his most sulphur- 
ous tirade anent disreputable nostrums. "Old Spart," as 
he was dubbed, waded along through the mystic lore for 
four years, and still thought that we wer^e under obliga- 
tions to General Goethals for the alimentary canal, but 
was licensed to burn M. D. at the end of his John Henry 
as part of his regular signature after the mortar-board 
cap and black-kimona seance. 

Armed with a lambskin and a lot of nerve, he re- 
turned to the gem of the Hubbard Squash Circuit, where 
he had first seen the light, rented a suite over the Rhu- 
barb Pharmacy and hung out a neat black and gold sign 
attesting to the willingness of S. Jawsmith, Physician 
and Siu-geon, to have people come and give him their 
money. 

He had quite a bit of information on the mild chloride 
of mercury, was wise to quinine and reduced iron and 
knew about all that was known about several good propri- 
etaries. He was tickled into ecstasy to take a dollar off a 
hick for sending him downstairs with a prescription. 

However, he noted that there were other worlds to 
conquer, and when the green apple season came on he 
discovered that he was not getting his. He discerned that 
the fat of the Ricinis Communis was knocking his in- 
come into a cocked hat because the Rubes bought a 
dime's worth and he did not get his dollar, but he saw his 
chance. He grew facial vines of the professional type and 
soaked his savings for a kit of jimmies for breaking into 
people. Common Colly Wobbles and Horse Colic oc- 
casioned by mixing too much cold slaw, onions and home- 
made ice cream immediately became appendicitis — that 
old reliable standby that has kept many an M. D. out of 
the hay fields. 

When he was called to some youngster who had ex- 
ceeded his stomachic capacity with green groceries fresh 
from the garden, he put the eternal kibosh to the home 
remedies by declaring against the historic castor oil and 
the venerable mustard plaster. He would unhook a few 
links of ancient lingo, popular during the days of Homer, 
stroke the vines and say nothing but a laparotomy would 



FABLE OF SPARTICUS J AW SMITH, M, D, 97 

save the boy's life, all of which would knock the breath 
out of the agriculturalists because it hit them below the 
belt. 

After his first operation, which was a howling suc- 
cess, although the patient died promptly, he found that 
he was shy a rubber glove and a pair of artery forceps, 
which to this day have not been found, although the 
cemetery has not been searched. However, Sparticus did 
not mourn the loss of his tools because he took more 
long green off of the family for sewing them up inside the 
patient than he could have separated them from in years 
giving them medicine. 

Sparticus developed into a real raz-ma-taz surgeon, 
and operated for every known disease, from lame back 
to disappointed affections. He was strong for the moth- 
ers* clubs. He could climb into his low-necked head- 
waiter upholstery with a large white chrysanthemum in 
the buttonhole, spill a few choice technical terms and the 
dames wer« ready to follow him around. He butted into 
the schools, addressed the ladies* aid societies, in which 
he paraded long lists of dead babies, drunken mothers 
and frequent funerals due to use of patent medicine. 

Sparticus did not know whether patent medicine was 
good, bad or indifferent, but he did know that it was bad 
business to permit a mutt to get relief from a twenty-five 
cent bottle of some disreputable nostrum when there was 
a chance to slice him up and stick the family or the life 
insurance company for a few hundred good American 
dollars. 

Sparticus had the ancient lightning rod man backed 
into a siding to wait for sanitarium treatment for loss of 
speech when it came to talking them into having a part 
of the anatomy removed. All that interrupted the career 
of the great surgeon was that the price of cemetery lots 
rose like patent yeast, and in the percentage column of the 
killings and cures, the former had the best of it. 

On a sunny spring morning, he received an urgent 
call to the bedside of one James Partridge, who owned 
the north half of the county and everything in the village, 
except the postoffice. Sparticus could see some very 
pink, nice, pleasant business ahead of him; in fact, long 
before he arrived in sight of the Partridge home he had 
figured that he could do it for three thousand dollars, 
as Partridge was likely to survive the operation, having 
been kicked by mules, run over by tractors and struck by 
lightning without making a dent in his general health. 



98 FABLE OF SPARTICUS J AW SMITH, M. D. 

Sparticus went through the usual tactics of feeling the 
pulse, poking the patient in the ribs and squeezing a 
stethoscope against his breast, presumably to see if he 
could find a knock in his engine, but, really, Sparticus 
was not counting the pulse or listening to the heart-beats, 
he was trying to figure out how to break the news to the 
patient in a way that would make the three thousand a 
cinch. It was not a matter of physiology, but a matter 
of physiognomy. When he had finished his once-over he 
registered pain and sympathy in a way that would make 
Mary Pickford green with envy. He told Mr. Partridge 
that he might survive this attack but that the next one 
would get his angora. 

The veteran pork shipper bucked like a brindle steer, 
and told the doctor wher-e to go. The doctor said, "All 
right, do as you like," but before he left he tipped the 
wife and daughters that father Was in a bad way. He 
told them that the family meal ticket was the victim of 
inflammation of the vermiform appendix. The family 
threw a sweepstake fit right off the reel, landed on 
**Paw" with tears, and, as usual, they compromised by 
having it like mother and the girls wanted it. 

Father was bundled off to the Jawsmith human repair 
shop, where he was promptly opened and searched for 
trouble. He recovered rapidly in spite of all the doctor 
could do, and was back among the Poland Chinas in 
less than two weeks, but had a pain in the region of the 
incision. The pain grew worse and worse until the old 
man was sick for fair and had to be re-opened. Mother 
stood hard by this time in spite of the perky nurses, who 
tried to get her out of the room, and she noticed the 
needles and the ball of twine that the doctor removed 
and thought they were out of place inside a human 
being. 

When father recovered the second butchering and re- 
turned to his beloved "Hawgs" mother told him about 
the needles and twine and he did not do a thing but sue 
the doctor for malpractice. When the case was tried it 
was found that the site of justice was full of strange 
whiskered individuals with dinky little chains reaching 
from the second story windows of their vests to little 
gold safety-pin^ fastenings. When father's lawyer saw 
these, he said, "Well, it's all off." 

Dr. Jawsmith proved by the Vandykes that it was 
sometimes necessary to leave a few things inside the 
patient. Father cursed the experts quietly, grinned and 
paid the costs and the three thousand. 



FABLE OF SPAJ^TICUS JAWSMITH, M, D. 99 

Sparticus stayed in the bailiwick until the yokels dis- 
covered that he had signed certificates that admitted to 
the cemetery most of those who slept in the silent city 
when it became necessary for him to go where his services 
were appreciated. He is now a great surgeon in a city 
where he spends his mornings tamping tepid atmosphere 
into a bunch of amateurs and owns a cutting room that 
makes Armour's look as seldom as an old maid at a 
mother's congress, in which he spends his afternoons cor- 
recting the mistakes of God. 

Moral : United we stand ; divided we fall. 



SOME GRAFTERS I HAVE 
KNOWN 

IT IS with a great degree of pardonable pride that I 
point to my profound knowledge of what the every day 
American is pleased to denominate a grafter, owing of 
course to the fact that I have bought experience in 
quantity lots. 

I am not exaggerating when I say that I have met 
them all, from the youthful specimen from the home of- 
fice in Iowa City, who has a line of toilet specialties and 
perfumes with a show case free, a deal that has put more 
retail druggists in John D. Rockefeller's class than booze 
ever put in jail, up to the fatherly old gentleman who is 
doing a philanthropic stunt with old Dr. Jaggerman's old 
reliable line of family remedies with an advertising 
scheme that would absolutely force customers into your 
place and likewise coin into your pocket. 

From the star bedecked fields of reminiscence comes 
a varied and elegant assortment of grafters that in the 
matter of numbers makes the sands of the sea pale with 
insignificance and the stars of the great blue dome look 
as seldom as old maids at a mothers' congress. 

Nineteen hundred years after the advent of our Sa- 
vior into this vale of tears yours truly embarked in a very 
small boat on the choppy sea of pharmacy and it seemed 
that in twenty-four hours afterward every experience 
factory on the North American continent had gotten a 
line of information on me and sent a man on the first 
train to make me an elegant spiel embellished with the 
choicest adjectives, slap me on the shoulder, and show 
me where to sign. In this gang of artistic commercial 
porch climbers were some of the most thorough, best 
educated, high-grade gentlemen cut-throats that ever car- 
ried a sample case in Texas. 

During the palmy days yours respectfully was pass- 
ing through that innocent age of youth when I stood ever 
ready to give two tens for a five, to loan money to tramps, 
and could pull more badgers in a given time than any 
amateur in the State. 

101 



102 SOME GRAFTERS I HAVE KNOWN 

I have met the man with the mining stock that paid 
four sixty per cent dividends annually and bought enough 
stock to paper my room. I have been up against the 
man with the exclusive deal on a line of dope that 
worked the cash register overtime, I have formed the 
acquaintance of the guy who let me in on the ground 
floor of a scheme and I awoke in the fourteenth story 
with no elevator. I have met the lad who owns a gold 
brick plant with a capacity of 100 cars daily and bought 
the output of the factory for a year, but as I gaze down 
jthe well-trodden aisles of the long past methinks I can 
see the intelligent face of that king of grafters, the real 
artist, the finished product, the only man living who 
could rob a National cash register with the proprietor 
Jooking at him or whipsaw a Burroughs adding machine 
into telling a lie about a total. He was master of his 
craft and if he had been allowed to run at large for two 
years would have been the possessor of a roll of the 
filthy lucre that would have made August Belmont look 
like a slick dime rolling around a bunch of United 
States bonds. As well as I can remember, this whole- 
sale short change artist was an elegant looking young 
specimen wearing about two hundred dollars' worth of 
clothes, with a shiner in his shirt front that looked like 
an arc light on the dark of the moon. He wore a rim- 
less glass front and talked well, I should smile and smirk 
to twitter. In the matter of a linguistic elucidation he 
had that ancient and time-honored purveyor of lightning 
Tods backed into a siding to wait nine weeks for sanitor- 
ium treatment for loss of speech. He made Ananias look 
like a white sided Texas steer at a Boston banquet. 

He was discoursing elaborately on reason number 
sixty-four when I began to succumb, a rose-colored 
cloud floated before my eyes, a summer home in Atlantic 
City ai\d to Palm Beach when the northers came, chased 
themselves through my fleeting mind, I dreamed of a 
bank roll as big as a Coca Cola barrel, and of doing free 
library stunts and being the owner of a flock of gasoline 
carts. 

It seemed from the trend of the polished narrative 

that he handed me that he had always felt it was his 
duty, decreed from the foundation of the world, to come 
to Texas and free the retail druggists of the great Lone 
Star State from the galling chains of the jewelry trust. 
It was here that I burned my John Henry into the bot- 
tom line of a sheet of pink parchment containing whereas 
and whyfores. Handing me a yellow duplicate, he gave 
my hand a gentle squeeze and hoped that I could stand 



SOME GRAFTERS I HAVE KNOWN 103 

the prosperity that would naturally come from the great 
investment that I had just made. 

Somehow I felt like a millionaire. I had an inherent 
hankering to be seen down at the buzz wagon depart- 
ment store buying a dozen benzine buggies of assorted 
sizes and handing them around to my friends. I went 
over to the First National Bank and it seemed that I 
could hear the yellow boys say **Papa." 

After perusing the hereinbeforementioned yellow du- 
plicate I soaked up the intelligence that I was to receive 
by express, prepaid, two thousands dollars' worth of 
jewelry more or less solid gold, and the one thousand 
dollar shares of stock in the Bunco Skinnem Jewelry 
Company, Limited. I read no further, I simply had to go 
out and celebrate in my firm belief in the old adage that 
fortune knocks once at every man's door, and it seemed 
that this time she had loosened the hinges on mine. 
During the lucid intervals I perused my duplicate to get 
information on the shining shekles that I was soon to 
possess, and last but not least of all, I absorbed the in- 
formation that I was to pay the Bunco Skinnem Jewelry 
Company, Limited, the paltry sum of 1800 plunks in 
twelve installments of one hundred and fifty dull thuds 
each. Time passed as usual and the goods came and 
opened up to my entire distraction. A more ordinary 
looking bunch of tinsel was never gotten together. Im- 
agine my feelings, that is if you ever had delirium tre- 
mens and hydrophobia at the same time, otherwise save 
your imagination until next spring and make it into 
poetry. One thousand collar buttons to retail at ten 
cents each. This is where I dropped the invoice and 
grabbed my hair, bursted my belt and collar and fell in 
a fit, the kind usually used in epilepsy. When I recov- 
ered consciousness the atmosphere smeiled strongly of 
brimstone and I found that I had made the English vo- 
cabulary of descriptive adjectives look like thirty cents 
in the coin of the realm of Mexico. I threw the entire 
shipment into the corner of the back room and after- 
ward sold the whole consignment, piano and all, to a 
street faker for twenty-five dollars on the installment 
plan, for which I received one installment and the plan,. 

During the halcyon days of the youthful end of my 
career as dope disher to the millions I fostered slum- 
bering ambition to fan the heated brow of the goddess of 
fame with a turkey wing and to have the world look on 
me as champion of the long green, but after having taken 
an invoice of my mental capabilities and having gone 
down in miserable defeat before a tribe of grafters, I made 



104 SOME GRAFTERS I HAVE KNOWN 

the astounding discovery as an investment specialist I 
am about the most consummate bluff since the passing of 
Don Quixote. 

I have fed enough of the bank lithographs into the 
mill of experience to pay the National debt and my col- 
lection of gold bricks would make the Galveston sea 
wall green with envy. I have bought well advertised 
patents in car lots to get two per cent and six months 
dating, only to find that they were entirely unknown, 
save to the people who made them. I have purchased 
expensive space in newspapers, guaranteed printed in 
six different languages and to reach every quarter of the 
'earth, and afterwards foimd that you could walk out of 
their circulation in two hours on crutches. 

And cigars, the drug man's nightmare, the short rope 
wrapped in the guise of leaf Queen of Porto Rico, I have 
bought them in large juicy bunches, supposed to be the 
very sunshine of the smoker's life, and later discovered 
that they were filled with rubber comb teeth and wrapped 
in a painted rag, and to smoke one on the street was con- 
sidered a misdemeanor by connoisseurs of the weed. 

And stock food — my last general inventory shows 
quantity lots of forty-three different brands, and to offer 
a dollar package as a prize with a ten cent purchase is 
^considered a joke by the man with the hoe. 

And the well ridden hobby, "my own preparations." 
1 remember well "Cousins' Aqua Vitae," guaranteed to 
<ure every disease from Eczema to disappointed affec- 
tions. I had a customer on it. An old lady took two 
bottles of it and had to send for the doctor. 

Casting a retrospective glance over my career as re- 
ception committee for Texas to the grafters, it seems to 
me that the bunch of business buccaneers I have met 
have Mayor Schmidt of San Francisco beat to a batter, 
and they make Sam Bass and Jesse James look like ama- 
teurs. I learned long ago that a Spanish dagger in the 
hand of a masked highwayman is as harmless as a white 
•winged butterfly compared with a fountain pen in the 
hand of a modern business promoter. You may think 
you are the wise guy of all creation, but your hook is on 
the bottom when you are fostering any such erroneous 
ideas. Remember your knowledge is general, but the 
man who drags a grip packed with phony samples of an 
experience factory is a specialist. And any time you 
win from one of these collectors of cuticle you will be 
retired from service on full pay with a pension. 

Now for a short line of advice to my fraternal brothers 



SOME GRAFTERS I HAVE KNOWN 105 

assembled today in the Island City. Take my advice and 
thereby get wise to the commercial dermatologist and 
hand him the compliments of the citrus union. Remember 
that his system of business has supplanted the methods of 
the old time Texas holdup who stopped the stage and 
examined the color of your eyes through the sights of a 
horse pistol, while his pal turned you upside down and 
counted what fell out, never taking more than you had. 
On the other hand the daylight burglar takes all you 
have and your note for the balance. 

Do not think for a moment that I mean to dispute the 
time-honored adage that experience is worth whatever 
you pay for it, but merely wish to enlighten you to the 
effect that it is my unchangeable belief that if you bull 
the experience market you will overstock, and believe me, 
the poor farms are inhabited with would-have-been-mil- 
lionaires who got short on coin getting long on experi- 
ence. 

And as I stand before you today the most grafted 
grafter ever grafted, I wish to say to you that of all 
grafts ever permitted in Texas, barring the New York 
Life Insurance Company and the Louisiana lottery, 
the jewelry man has them all whippedtoawhimper. You 
can toy with cotton futures, burn holes in the race track, 
feed your cash sales into July wheat, you may go down 
to the boozologist and wade waist deep in that gently 
foaming amber-colored liquid that grows wild in Mil- 
waukee, you may get on the outside of barrels of cracked 
ice soaked in the vintage of seventeen hundred and forty- 
two, then go out and buck every game from ping pong to 
parlor poker in the park, and your assets will grow and 
thrive compared with the result of one interview with 
the jewelry man. 



GENERALLY SPEAKING 

(Address delivered by W. H. Cousins before the Texas 
Pharmaceutical Association at Fort Worth, Texas, June 
14, 1922.) 

WHEN notified by Chairman Rike that I would 
be expected to sputter before the Queries Com- 
mittee instead of a subject being assigned to me 
he said, "Let your conscience be your guide." I have 
done this without any regard whatever for your con- 
sciences. Marvin Anderson suggested that I write a 
history of myself. I asked Walter Adams about taking 
myself for a subject, he said that would be a heluva sub- 
ject. 

The annual meeting of the Texas Pharmaceutical As- 
sociation always brings to my mind a cluster of memories. 
Some of them tender and some of them as tough as a 
Dallas newsboy on lower McKinney avenue. Today is 
the forty-third birthday of the association. Forty-three 
years ago the association was presided over in Dallas by 
L. Meyers Connor, its first president. Today we are 
taking orders from big Bill Collins from the cattle coun- 
try. 

Quite a number of things have happened during the 
flight of these forty-three years. Many things were done 
then that are not fashionable now. For instance a pre- 
scription could be filled without the advice of the supreme 
court. Corn was measured by the bushel instead of by 
the quart, and was used for hunger instead of thirst. In 
those days the druggist paid his taxes at the court house 
just as any other citizen paid taxes, whereas today with 
the aid of an attorney, a battery of stenographers and 
two expert accountants he is finally able to determine 
how much he is to pay for the privilege of staying on 
earth. 

The pharmacist of forty years ago ran largely to scien- 
tific knowledge, latin conversation and whiskers. He 
was the type who liked to mess around back of the scenes. 
He was overjoyed at an opportunity to do $3 worth of 
work on a smelly concoction that he afterwards sold for 
25 cents. 

107 



108 GENERALLY SPEAKING 

Back in the days when Tom Coulson was in the jelly- 
bean class and Coakey Evans was filling up the hole upon 
which they afterwards built Jewett; if a ninety-pound, 
waspy-waisted gum-chewing flapper had breezed into a 
pill emporium and asked for a lip-stick of barn-roof red, 
the pharmacist of that day would have fainted and fallen 
right down among his own whiskers. 

Recently Flake Williams was out West checking up 
a bunch of salesmen and had occasion to use a small 
quantity of Fehling's Solution. He entered a drug store 
and asked for four ounces of Fehling's Solution. He was 
told by the proprietor that the soda fountain had been 
closed for the winter. 

Think of it, forty years ago the world must have 
been in a pitiful state. At that time there was no Texas 
Board of Pharmacy. Imagine, if you can, the world 
trying to plod along without Wilford Harrison and Wal- 
ter Whisenant. At that time Bill Collins was doing re- 
search work on teething rings while Adelaide Richardson 
and Clarence Eiland were both in the future tense. The 
longest headed prophet of that day little dreamed that the 
Texas Board of Pharmacy would be selling Texas cer- 
tificates for $11.80 a piece, with a half gross of Harri- 
son's Red Head Capsules free with each certificate. 

In those days Walter Jarrett was as square a guy as 
ever pounded powder in a safe and was earning an honest 
living from a hygea nursing bottle, never dreaming that 
he would eventually be closing up Oklahoma drug stores 
that sold jake without having a registered pharmacist in 
charge of the bar. Forty years ago Tom Roach was not 
an old man; he had just passed through that impudent 
age of red spats, pink neckties and believed that the 
honor of being the greatest living American lay between 
Jesse James and Lillian Russell. At that time Tom had 
never tried to unscramble a pint of Warburg's tincture 
or analyze a batch of chili con came. 

The sedate pharmacist of forty years ago was con- 
fronted with the momentous question of whether com- 
pound jalap powder belonged in the chemical section or 
among the botanicals. He now has a son who cannot 
decide whether inner tubes belong in the rubber tube case 
or in the monkey wrench department. The old man dis- 
charged a clerk for confusing sodium bromide with 
potassium bromide; the son hung the tinware on a 
luncheonette jellybean for getting blue ointment in the 
crab salad. 



GENERALLY SPEAKING 109 

The old man used to spend hours trying to make 
camphor spirit with awfully little camphor. The young 
man is now trying to produce a hogless ham sandwich, 
make macaroni out of rubber tubing that had gone bad 
and whip cream from glucose and com starch. Both of 
them were wonders in their day. 

Not only has there been a great change in the phar- 
macists in the last forty years, but there has also been a 
change in that shapeless mob commonly known as "cus- 
tomers." Suppose one of those vineclad old heroes of the 
game during the days when blue mass and cinchona bark 
were specifics for everything from dysentery to disap- 
pointed affections, should be called to the hurricane deck 
of one of the roaring pharmaceutical volcanoes of today. 
Imagine him, if you can, as he picks his way around 
among the sheaves of magazines, stacks of bathing suits, 
mountains of 10-cent nutmeg graters, past piles of plyers, 
pinch bars and pineapple pie. Glimpse his facial registra- 
tion when he noses around for the smell of mace and is 
hit in the middle of olfactory economy with a breeze 
from a gurgling pot of oniated beef stew. 

Get him as he takes a slant at "Mame," the nineteen 
twenty-three model Venus of Milo, who can register nine- 
teen hundred cash sales in eight hours without neglect- 
ing her nose paint or missing a single stroke on the 
chickle, and at the same time peddle a thousand 20-cent 
Havanas to ginks who expected to buy three-for-a-dollar 
and get 90 cents in change back. Methinks I can see the 
old chap wrap his whiskers about his shambling form 
and beat it for the desert as "Mame" gurgles, "Must be 
Methuselah's grandfather." There is certainly a differ- 
ence in the type of cattle that stampede through the cor- 
ner drug store today and those who browsed around in 
the aroma of assafoetida and ammonia valerianate back 
in the days when sundries did not include camisoles, corn 
shellers, strap hinges and coffee. 

When the belle of 1880 hitched old Dobbin at the 
rack in front of Timothy Teeter's Prescription Phar- 
macy, she carried a handbag that looked like a hardware 
salesman's sample case in one hand, while with the other 
she struggled with an awful load of skirt. She was ever 
mindful of the chagrin she would experience if Mr. Teet- 
ers should see the toes of her shoes, although she went 
shamelessly about the street with both her ears in plain 
view of everybody. Tiptoeing in order to see over a 
concrete collar, reinforced with whalebone, she, in a very 
reticent manner, made known her wants to Mr. Teeters. 



110 GENERALLY SPEAKING 

She bought a small square box of pink pr^epared chalk, a 
dime's worth of powdered carmine and a bottle of Florida 
water. Her bill was forty-five cents. 

Contrast this eighteen-and-eighty model with the two 
cylinder runabout who stops a slim-nosed, low-hung, 
man-killing limousine with two wheels on the sidewalk 
and falls in at the front door writhing to the teasing jazz 
from the balcony at Swift Cunningham's Metropolitan 
Pharmacy. Polishing her nose and taking a poke op two 
at her Lord Fauntleroy tresses of wheaten hue, she says, 
**Little service please, and make it snappy; gimme two 
bottles of that fancy French embalmin' fluid you was 
ravin' 'bout yesterday. Huh? What does it sniff like? 
Hey, fe'ler, I don't care for this ; smells like a barber shop 
with an onion patch in the rear. Gimme Coty's. Lemme 
have four boxes of face dust and a powder puff, biggest 
you got; six nail files, two boxes of polish and a pair of 
buffers. Got any striped rouge? Gimme two sticks of 
kisser paint, turkey red. Nope, no hair nets; my mop 
leaks out through 'em." She lays down a twenty-case 
yellow boy of which Swift Cunningham's trusted under- 
study cops nineteen dollars and fifteen cents. 

Forty years have made a marked change in the stores. 
Back when Christy Mathewson was learning to fling an 
eighteen-inch curve and make it split the plate, and 
Remington was wondering if there was anybody on earth 
or elsewhere who knew for sure whether or not there 
was a single virture to sarsaparilla, the store known as 
apothecary shops looked more like the sample room of a 
glass factory. There was a huge array of fancy gilt 
labeled bottles and squatty wide-mouthed jars with queer 
names written in Old English lettering. What is now 
known as fixtures was then denominated shelves and 
show cases. The shelves were usually the handiwork of 
the carpenter who built the building, and the showcases 
were mounted on huge wooden counters. This, it seems, 
was done to keep the men of average stature from seeing 
what was inside of them. The show windows were filled 
with huge globes filled with water in which various 
aniline products had been dissolved. Recently I men- 
tioned aniline to a drug clerk and he thought I was 
talking about a movie actress. 

Back of the scenes was the laboratory with its exhibit 
of filter stands, percolators, retorts, suppository moulds, 
etc., where the apothecary made fluid extracts, elixirs, in 
fact practically everything used in the prescription de- 
partment. This space is now occupied by a battery of 
gas ranges presided over by white capped chefs of 



GENERALLY SPEAKING 111 

Ethiopian lineage who do not know whether atropine is 
the name of the Queen of Belgium or a new brand of 
rubber boots. 

If the trend of forty years in American pharmacy 
should continue for ten years more, we believe the next 
revision committee will be asked to furnish a standard 
for ham sandwiches, chili cone carne and Hungarian gou- 
lasch. For the benefit of those not versed in the newer 
materia medica I will say that the latter term translated 
means everything left from yesterday, including the rab- 
bit left over from the chicken sandwiches. We believe 
the national formulary will give the age of eggs permis- 
sible in drug store cocoanut pie and recommend that 
the whipped cream have some kind of connection with a 
cow. 

We predict that the Board of Pharmacy questions on 
materia medica will be about as follows : 

1. Give the percentage of orange shellac permitted 
by the food and drug act for making varnish for apple 
pie. 

2. Give the Latin term for the following: One on 
the rail, one red bird with white wings, three medium, 
two shots in the arm and squeeze one. 

3. Express in metric quantities the amount of garlic 
present in fourteen ounces avoirdupois of U. S. P. of Irish 
stew. 

4. Give a chemical test for ascertaining the age of 
beef to be used in making chicken salad after the formula 
of the national formulary of 1930. 

5. Give Anderson's method of embalming minced 
ham for an indefinite period. What percentage of for- 
maldehyde is used in this process? 

6. Define merchant's lunch, roast and brown, pick it 
up. 

7. What is a banana split? When, where, and by 
whom should a banana be split? To what class of edible 
junk does this uncertain mixture belong? 

8. Give the chemical antidote for poisoning by lip 
paint when absorbed in Coca Cola at the back table. 
What procedure would you follow in case of an over- 
swig of Jamaica Ginger? Would you call the emergency 
hospital or the police station? 



112 GENERALLY SPEAKING 

9. Give the adult dose of hair tonic when taken with 
ginger ale. What percentage of hair tonic is used on the 
hair? What chemical effect does the odor of onion have 
on spark plugs and tire wrenches? 

10. Give the best method for putting up one's hands 
when a yeggman slips a gatling gim immediately under 
one*s nose with directions to "Stick 'em up." Which is 
the most unjust of the twenty-eight separate taxes a drug- 
gist has to pay? What is a dose of republican prosperity? 



THE AWAKENING OF EMORY 

(.Same being a story of a salesman who outlived his 
line. He used to split the plate so fast that nobody could 
get to first base but almost short-circuited in the seventh 
inning and who, but for the coaching of a wise one, 
would have gone to the discard a blown-up delegate.) 

EMORY UNDERWOOD, in addition to being 
weighted down from birth with a name that would 
queer him in fast company, had a lot of things the 
matter with him besides what ailed him. He started out 
in the race of life between two grips and looked like a 
pennant-winner until the seventh, when his thinker water- 
logged and he began to hit the bat ten inches from the 
end every other peg. One of the arm weights was packed 
with samples from the house while the other was all 
bloated up with a safety razor and a sheet-iron, mosquito- 
proof nightshirt of passionate hue. He was known in the 
Sorghum Belt where he let the natives have stacks of 
stuff as the unclassified specimen and was famous for 
being the owner of the warmest comeback ever exhibited 
by a commercial' tourist between Kaffir Corn Junction 
and Turnip Center. 

Em*s mission on earth was to inveigle the drug trade 
into burning its John Henry into the lower line of a sheet 
of pink parchment on which were enumerated various and 
sundry tin foil manicur-e implements packed in dinkey 
boxes from the cellulose group. His specialty was ped- 
dling a large pine box covered with green plush and deco- 
rated with imported ivory made in Chicago, having 
"WITH LOVE" written in business college script across 
the top and filled with tools essential to beauty culture, 
none of which could be used except to look at. He also 
had a line of family photograph albums with windows 
in the leaves from out of which all the relatives who had 
faced the camera could gaze at whoever chose to turn 
the pages. Taking it all the way 'round, Em's line was a 
humdinger in eighteen hundred and eighty. Somehow 
our hero could not get it thr-ough his mental condenser 
that the Maurines and Tessies who tear around the boule- 
vards in low-hung, long-nosed, man-eating limousines 
with imported speed demons standing on the accellerq- 

113 



114 THE AWAKENING OF EMORY 

tors and letting a pedestrian escape every now and then, 
were somewhat different in their tastes and desires from 
the Marys and Hannahs of some years ago, who wore 
their collars up to their lower teeth and drove old Dob- 
bin to the shay at a pace that barely kept the walking 
public from running over them. He could not get hep 
to the fact that a modern Cleopatra doing her eighteenth 
hole on life's green could not find a piece of his line in her 
boudoir with a search warrant and could not see herself 
wanting a photograph album with a long distance tele- 
scope. 

When Em dropped into Garvin's, on Main street, 
where he used to total his orders on an adding machine 
and ship the stuff by Red Ball, the gentleman with the 
marble top and the peroxide fringe who looks after ex- 
changing the house's money for merchandise, handed him 
a cake of ice that would cool Lake Michigan in August. 
Mr. Emory Under*wood gracefully adjusted his cuffs so 
that the Elks' Lodge buttons would show, swallowed a 
lump about the size of a two-for-a-quarter grape fruit 
that had crawled up in his throat, and sputtered some- 
thing about the line being stronger than ever. He of the 
Aurum tresses and the smooth, shiny dome who had been 
in the game since long before the spit ball was discov- 
ered, so long, in fact, that he couldn't tell a motorcycle 
from a giraffe unless he was looking across plate glass, 
said, "Yes, strongest line I ever saw; got a wire cable 
whipped to a whisper, been trying to break a dozen for 
over a year, but there are still twelve of them on the top 
shelf. Get a line the mob wants to buy if you are figuring 
on leaving any of it here, we cut out keepsakes during 
the Spanish-American war. Got any gold vanity boxes 
with platinum lids for Friday sales at fifty-two eighty- 
nine? How about some cigarette holders to retail for 
nine-ninety?" 

Em framed up an awful come-back for the guy of the 
wheaten plumage, but forgot to spill it until he got to 
Union Station, where he poured it all over a red-head 
for offering to carry his grips. As he traveled down the 
road he continued to get refrigeration from the guys who 
used to hand him orders already signed and beg him to 
make them out for whatever he said was right. He begun 
to rubber in the mirror, he had to go out and shy a rock 
to see which was his right hand and pinched himself to 
see if he were the same party who used to make the ter- 
ritory. He decided his liver was on the blink and swigged 
all kinds of hepatic tonics; it never having occurred to 
him that his line was about as live as a mummy having 
been outlawed by society's keen ones right after the bat- 



THE AWAKENING OF EMORY 115 

tie of Gettysburg. He could not understand that pushing 
a line of photograph albums was a pastime in vogue back 
in the days of wide curves when it took five' balls to walk 
the batter and when five highballs would sometimes 
double the order. Em saw the rah-rah boys with two 
months' experience and a line of toothpicks getting away 
with it; he stood by masticating the thick plug Tinsley 
and watched some Pinkey De Shonts win a meal ticket 
out of a line of pencil sharpeners and said to himself, 
"Emory, old boy, you are a dead one ; you could not sell 
goggles in a sandstorm; you either came too soon or 
stayed too long; you loom up in the commercial game 
of late like a boiler-maker at a style show." 

Feeling outclassed and disqualified he wondered what 
a fellow got for running an elevator. The white apron 
and the tray did not look so bad to him until he thought 
of taking orders for tenderloin and hash browns from the 
chaps with whom he had shared everything from expense 
checks to eating tobacco in the sweet dead past, when 
the buyers were hollering for family albums from Broad- 
way to Brownsville. When he moped into the hotel the 
key-juggler who had been tossing them at the wall since 
Pike's Peak was a pimple on the face of the earth, gave 
him the greeter's flash and decided he had lost a relative 
and said, "Can the grief, Emory, the sun always shines 
sometimes ; cheer up, it is not your fault that the world is 
full of trouble.'* Emory said, "Yes, I guess it's me, I just 
can't put it over any more." The greater said, "What's 
the trouble?" "Nothing much," said Emory. "I have not 
scratched the parchment in two weeks and the house is 
going to want an order sometime. I guess I am in the 
has-been division." "Oh, cut the melodrama," said the 
sage of signatures, "I thought your brother was dead. 
What are you trying to let the natives have anjrway?" 
"Photograph albums and celluloid novelties for the drug 
trade," wept the wreck. "Photograph albums!" ex- 
claimed the room peddler. "Say, guy, they pinched a 
chap for swindling right here in the lobby last night. 
Of course, if you have not sold any they can't get you, 
but if you had a bonafide order for photograph albums 
and they pinched you, the case would not be worth fight- 
ing. Don't you know that a chap "who would take good 
money for that junk is in Dutch with all the juries in the 
world. Why don't you try the jewelry trade with a line 
of hour glasses and sun dials, or work the garages with a 
line of ox carts?" "I used to sell 'em," roared the sad 
one. "Sure you did; they used to gamble wide open in 
Oklahoma, but now you go in a cave, roll a boulder 
across the door and cock both your guns to smoke a 
cigarette. 



116 THE AWAKENING OF EMORY 

"Grab yourself, old head, you are slipping; your line 
for the cemetery with a military funeral, but you don't 
have to go with it unless you want to. My grandfather 
was some speedy gazook when he hit the trail with a 
line of hoop skirts and spinning wheels, but you have not 
detected yours humbly trying to vend any Grampus' 
wooden ware have you? Have you met anybody trying 
to peddle plans for log school houses or ash hoppers with 
which to buck the Potash Trust? Don't kid yourself so 
brutally because time passes, the world moves and things 
change. Of course I must admit that you are out in the 
rain with a straw when you are trying to string the 
trade with a line of photograph albums, but you look to 
me like you are strong enough to come in out of it. An 
up-to-the-minute pillist would not buy photograph albums 
from you on a bet; he does not want a seance with the 
lunacy board. Shave off your mustache, paste your hair 
down the wrong way and try a line that the nabobs are 
willing to trade good money for. A sticker and a staple 
are just as similar as a canary bird and a buzzard. The 
family mug book was a staple when the late Mr. Sher- 
man was touring Georgia as a pedestrian, but is a sticker 
at the present moment. Your line can't come back any 
more than Mr. Sherman can retrace his steps and you 
don't have to come back because you have not gone any- 
where; get a half Nelson on yourself and go on from 
where you are." 

The wreck began to come around and decided that the 
wisest specimen that is loose in the world today is the 
chap who wears out his vest bending over the marble 
slab and ruins his voice yelling "front," who gives up a 
million dollars worth of information every year on which 
there is no charge. Em made a quick trip around to the 
telegraph desk and tipped the house that he would be in 
their employ for only two weeks more. 

He was seen a month later and the smile was working 
overtime, his face was wider than it had been long, tot- 
tering under sample cases of real merchandise with buy- 
ers trying to beat the war advance, with prosperity leak- 
ing from every pore. Emory was giving a correct imita- 
tion of a man with a mission on earth. 

IN A NUT SHELL: LOOK OVER YOUR LINE 
BEFORE YOU TAKE POISON, AND WHEN IN 
DOUBT, ASK THE HOTEL CLERK. 



THINGS THAT COME IN 
A DRUG STORE 

WE have always maintained that the unclassified 
specimens that frequent a drug store put it all 
over any aggregation of freaks to be found out- 
side of the nuttery. If a druggist had the vocabulary 
of Alfred Henry Lewis and the power of description of 
Irving Cobb there would be forthcoming some literature 
that would astonish the lay world. The physician 
thinks he is a student of human nature^ and does dabble 
around the edge of it; he is a good sport and does the 
best he can with the small assortment of material he 
has to work on. You will hear ministers boast of the 
knowledge they have of the passing human stream and 
they are honest in the thought that they have "seen 'em 
all" when they have just made the side show while the 
menagerie and the main tent they have never so much 
as given the once over. A druggist to meet the rabble 
must have an automatic temperament, a poker face and 
the patience of Job. The doctor meets one class, the 
minister another class, the photographer sees a class, 
the toddy tosser in the "bucket of blood" glims a certain 
element, but he of the pills, pastilles, prussic acid, per- 
fume, phonographs and phenacetine is the real trail 
cutter on the human herd. He knows that General 
Sherman had no right to monopolize the word in his 
definition of war and excuses him on the grounds that 
he never owned a drug store. Most of the authors of 
natural history would rent a mule and have themselves 
kicked by the hour at union scale if they knew what 
passes the portals of a pill shop every day. Naturalists 
have braved the wilds of the tropics for rare specimens 
of whiskered bugs when the corner drug store could have 
saved them an ocean voyage and delivered more bugs in 
one day than they could corral in a year on the River 
of Doubt. 

For instance, a highly developed specimen of "nut 
culture" is at once apparent in the youthful masculine 
specimen with a frog hair fringe on its upper lip, passion- 
ate hosiery, a loud shirt, noisy neckwear and a canary 

117 



118 THINGS THAT COME IN A DRUG STORE 

bird mentality that takes up space around the telephone 
that costs a dollar a square foot, hanging on by the hour, 
lisping sweet, frothy nothings into the ear of Miss 
Gelsemine Giggleworse. This specimen is just as pleas- 
ing to the druggist as a fly with St. Vitus' dance is to 
a man with a bald head. Likewise the sweet young 
thing with "Dolly Dimples" stenciled all over it in letters 
a foot long, a hunk of chicle that would throttle a cow 
and a series of giggles that leads one to believe that 
suicide in certain cases is to be commended and en- 
couraged. This specimen is harmless, nevertheless a 
pest. It wants a flivver's worth of stamps out of the 
middle of the sheet, two orangewood sticks and please 
send them out. "Out'* is right, her family occupies a 
section of human shelving in the "Fourflush" apartments 
out among the sunflowers. 

There is the connoisseur of cigars who gets a sidehold 
on the plate glass and unwinds a seven-reeler on "Her- 
vanner fillers and Smattry wrappers." He looks like 
an experienced smoker (of hame) and gives the druggist 
to understand that he has all the manufacturers in the 
country down on their knees begging for cigar informa- 
tion. He is just as interesting as yesterday's paper and 
is right at Old Atlas's side in case he wants help. After 
he has used up the druggist's time and patience he quiet- 
ly lights a cob pipe of the model of 1845 and struts out 
on the sidewalk to set at rest any uneasiness anent in- 
ternational affairs among the innocent bystanders who 
have a large advantage of the druggist in that they can 
take either end of the street and avoid the nausea. 

There is probably no unclassified specimen more 
familiar to veteran plate glass acrobats than the bottle- 
fed man child, eighteen summers from the maltum lactis, 
who has spotted himself as a traveler and is sincere in 
the belief that he is the main shaft of the commercial 
power house. He is fresh from the high school hot 
house in Saint Looey where he left off knickerbockers, 
decimal fractions and cube root to put the drug game 
wise to a stamp machine that bids fair to revolutionize 
the practice of pharmacy, or a paper clip which if 
Methuselah had used would have saved enough time that 
the world's old man would have been living yet. The 
long suffering universal eoat listens to the kindergarten 
prattle of the commercial trundle bedder and thinks how 
much time and patience it would save the craft if he 
could slip twenty grains of potassium cyanide into its 
root beer. However he dare not do it as this is one 
of the penalties that he knows he must pay for the un- 



THINGS THAT COME IN A DRUG STORE 119 

guarded moment in which he discarded a hay fork and 
took up Remington; he reaUzes that this is one of the 
thorns from the bouquet handed him on graduation night 
during the black kimona and the mud board cap seance 
when he looked with compassion and pity on the steen 
million and some odd unfortunate denizens of earth who 
did not have a pharmaceutical sheepskin with a gold 
freckle in the corner. He makes an entry in the book 
of memory and says to the cigar case, "Well, there are 
many kinds." 

The drug store crowd was what our late friend, Mr. 
Webster, meant when he put "Variety" in the 
dictionary. 



SOME SPECIALTY CROOKS 
I HAVE KNOWN 

SPEAKING of crooks (and I believe I have met 
them all, unless a new model has been launched 
since I left my office to come here), I have never 
met a crook who was not a; specialist. This is necessary 
if the human cork-screws are to succeed in getting the 
easy marks to come loose from the coin. 

A safe blower is ignorant of the rudimentary prin- 
ciples of porch climbing. A classy "jimmy" artist may 
be able to unbutton the most obstinate time-lock ever 
set for 9 o'clock a. m. at 2:30 a. m., and yet know noth- 
ing of the possibilities that attach to the use of a bar 
of "ivory" and a bowl of soup. The "flim-flam" expert 
who sells Jason Jawsmith, editor of the Weekly Turnip 
Leaf, the city hall on the installment plan on his first trip 
to the metropolis, would bungle a job of check raising so 
badly that it would fail to get the veriest hick banker, 
even though his money barn were located so far out in 
the sticks that he charges interest on funds in transit. 
Thus, it will be seen that each collector of cuticle has a 
little method all his own, and is as ignorant as a new- 
born babe of all other modes of getting to the sleeve with 
the ace. Take, for instance, the boiler-plate copysmith, 
whose ready-to-wear editorials are the greatest since He- 
rodotus left the city desk of the Egyptian Evening Pre- 
varicator in Cairo some years ago, may get the publish- 
ers seven dollars and sixty cents, and his note for the 
rest, yet if he were sent out to do gunless hold-ups with 
a subscription graft, he would prove a melancholy fluke 
and fail to qualify for a meal ticket and a room key the 
first week out. 

The fascination of studying the crooks who infest 
print shops and publishing offices has caused the writer 
to make a life study of the ingenious daylight burglar 
who comes in the front way, takes the coin out of your 
hand in preference to working out the combination of 
your new Mosler by flashlight. We cannot help having 
a sneaking respect for the gentleman crook who does his 
robbing with the consent and advice of the victim. He 

121 



122 SOME CROOKS I HAVE KNOWN 

knows his line of chocolate-coated conversation will get 
the money and save him the chance of wearing out a 
classy kit of burglar's tools breaking into an empty re- 
frigerator. The wop of the Waterman, who tells you 
where to sign will get more of your filthy lucre than the 
rough-neck who gets a slant on your complexion through 
the sights of a Colt Automatic. Some of these chaps are 
so wise they make Solomon's puny little accumulation of 
information look as seldom as an old maid at a Mother's 
Congress. Between the masked brute, armed with a 
pocket edition of the latest in artillery, and the Yale 
graduate armed with a fountain pen and a sheet of pink 
paper, I choose to be held up by the former, since he will 
take only what I have whereas the latter gets that and 
takes my note for whatever he thinks my income will 
amount to for a few years to come. 

Now, gentlemen, I hope you properly appreciate 
the treat I am giving you today. This rare array of in- 
formation was not given to me — I bought it. I have 
bulled the experience market from early childhood. Not 
a single graft has crossed the Mason and Dixon line that 
I did not help pay for. It might interest you to know 
that I have bought a chicken farm and afterward found 
that it was located six miles seaward from low tide in the 
Gulf of Mexico. I have a collection of gold brick that 
makes the sea-wall of this good city pale with insignifi- 
cance. I have enough mining stock printed on parch- 
ment vellum to paper every room in the Galvez Hotel. 
These glinting gems of experience have been w^ithheld 
from you because I have never been sure that the editor 
of a pill magazine, with his odor of assafoetida and his 
jumbled vocabulary of chemical nomenclature would be 
welcome among the angels of the fourth estate, yet to- 
day I feel at home among you since Sam Harben has as- 
sured me that the Texas Press Association would stand 
for anything up and including manslaughter. I feel that 
you won't cast me from the temple as a moneychanger 
and a "non-profesh" as long as you permit Lee Rountree 
and Jim Lowery to associate with you, because I have 
consulted a musty volume from my compendium of 
crooks and find that both of them have sold lightning 
rods, and I can but believe that peddling pot metal cork 
screws to farmers is almost as bad as spreading editorial 
flower gardens extolling the curative powers of phenyl- 
di-methyl-asopyrazalin. 

As I wander in retrospect through the fields of mem- 
ory and reminiscence there floats before my vision an ar- 
ray of grafters as numberless as the sands of the sea, but 



SOME CROOKS I HAVE KNOWN 123 

standing out in bold relief as the king of the craft of 
easy money i§ a noble specimen whose profile is indeli- 
bly graven on the tablets of my memory and whose face 
will haunt me to my grave. If I die tomorrow, or if I 
live long enough to put Methuselah in the castoria di- 
vision, I can never forget the prince of polite conversa- 
tion who sold me the books. He was a dapper, youngish 
lad; probably twenty-five summers from the malted milk 
and the Mother Goose stories, wearing at least a hun- 
dred dollars' worth of the happiest raiment that ever 
crossed the threshold of a sanctum. From the immacu- 
late linen covered pulley bone there gleamed a blue steel 
shiner about the size of a Brownwood pecan, such a 
stone as would have given Debeers heart failure and such 
as Isadore Loeb, of the three brass balls, expects to wear 
when they celebrate Yom Kipper in heaven. One look 
at his face convinced me that he was no relation of either 
Ananias or Benedict Arnold. In fact, I have since 
thought that if Mary, Queen of Scots, had possessed his 
facial map, she never would have lost her head to the 
guillotine. Talk? Yes, he talked. In the matter of lin- 
guistic elucidation, he had Mrs. Pankhurst, of suffragette 
fame, backed into a siding to wait nine weeks for sani- 
tarium treatment for loss of speech. He took liberties 
with the English language that would send the grape 
juice statesman, the boy orator of the Platte, to a school 
for stammering. He left Alfred Henry Lewis and the 
immortal Grady without enough vocabulary to ask for a 
drink of water. He inspired confidence of the kind you 
feel when a big husky with a bulging hip and a gun eye 
takes you away from the police and says, "Not on your 
tin-type less you can draw quicker en* shoot straightern 
me, fren* of mine. Get me?" This array of gold edge 
buck-ram bound volumes, according to his holler, took 
the place of the kindergarten, high school, college and 
the university. 

I was convinced that in no time I would have Arthur 
Brisbane's goat grazing peacefully in my alley. I could 
see myself showing the world that Irving Cobb did not 
possess as much power of delineation as a saddle com- 
plected tamale bender in Matamoras alongside of me. He 
showed me instances of where this great work had No- 
vated union plumbers and profane bricklayers to the lec- 
ture platform. He said: "These books have made State 
Press possible," and that Col. Taylor might be sweating 
and swearing quietly to a Washington hand press in the 
mechanical department of a Hickville Herald but for 
them. I was in a comatose condition at this stage of the 



124 SOME CROOKS I HAVE KNOWN 

seance and breathed a great heart-throb of sympathy for 
the poor unfortunates of my craft who would have to 
amble along through life without the Encyclopedia Gi- 
gantic in sixty volumes. I breathed a sigh of relief as I 
burned my John Henry into the bottom line of a pink 
sheet of expensive parchment, thank the Lord they were 
to be mine. I was afraid he would change his mind and 
decide not to let me have the books. I sat for hours 
with both hands full of my face, anticipating my sky- 
rocket rise in the world of literature. I could see myself 
withering Boston with a look of scorn, thus making a 
storm center of "Culchaw" look as coarse as a camp of 
Sioux Indians who were just eating a missionary. 

I was so bewildered by the torrents of convincing 
conversation that I did not ask the price. I later found 
that sixty volumes at fifteen per amounted to nine hun- 
dred American iron men. I was given ninety short days 
to liquidate the obligation or go to the courthouse. I 
am told that the crook has since grown a beard and is 
now peddling stock in the Remorse Copper Mines, 
which are located on the twenty-second floor of a Chi- 
cago skyscraper. 

Now, friends, you will note I am to discuss "some" 
of the crooks I have met, not all of them. A paper 
covering all of them, if set in six point, would look like 
a birthday edition of the Galveston News. 

The next rare specimen of the crooks that I have 
met that comes to my mind was almost an exact proto- 
type of Will H. Mayes, except that he had whiskers like 
General Grant and the demeanor of a sweet girl grad- 
uate. He opened his session with me by unwinding an 
oral film on bacteriology that would have done honor 
to the spirit of Koch or Pasteur. Bacteriology being 
my soft spot, I soon detected that in the matter of the 
science of bugs this chap was present and voting. He 
had chased the microbes of diphtheria, rheumatism and 
typhoid fever to their lairs and forced them to confess 
their identity. He could call bacteria by their first 
names and had science stenciled all over him in thirty- 
two point type. 

I fell for it and, as usual, was sorry for the pharma- 
ceutical editors who had not been so fortunate as I in 
meeting this giant of scientific research. Among other 
things, he told me how he had spent his life in scien- 
tific investigation, with the result that he was now 
coming before the world with a sovereign remedy that 



SOME CROOKS I HAVE KNOWN 125 

sent tuberculosis bacilli out of the back window when 
it was brought in at the front door. He was a specialist 
in the diseases of men, women and children, and had a 
string of degrees that looked like the chemical formula 
of a German headache powder, and listened like the 
titles of a prize calf at a state fair. He assured me that 
he was anxious to add his wonderful discovery to the 
list of ethical preparations to be found in the advertis- 
ing columns of the "Great Moral Monthly." He had 
been talking science, but was now talking sense. I 
was tempted to call the young man who presides over 
my advertising department into the editorial rooms and 
turn the man over to him, but I revolted at the idea of 
leaving the great scientist to the mercy of this cold, 
calculating commercialist, who measures success with 
no standard save the American dollar. 

Just at this point, I felt that in view of what this 
man had done for the therapeutic progress of the world, 
I really ought to take his copy and run it without 
remuneration or pay him something for the privilege, 
but he said "no" in a trembling voice, such as Margaret 
Illington uses just before she shoots herself with a pistol 
loaded with talcum powder, avenging herself on her 
lover by expiring against a blue tree at the foot of a 
paper mountain. He said, "I will ship you enough of 
this precious discovery to pay for the space many times 
over." I could close my eyes and see myself develop- 
ing the lungers camp into prize fighters. I would wipe 
tuberculosis from the map of Texas, and hereafter be 
known among my fellows as the chap who whipsawed 
the white plague and put the Rockefeller Institution out 
of a job. We ran the ad and the goods came, but some- 
how the success I had contemplated suddenly became 
null and void. I went to a close friend in the retail 
trade and told him that if I were properly approached, 
I would sell him this wonderful remedy at wholesale 
price. He suppressed a snig:ger that burst the sleeve 
of his silk shirt and said, "We have been trying to give 
awav a dollar bottle of that swill with each ten-cent 
purchase, and thev won't take it." I finally sold it 
to a eentleman of Hebrew lineage who buys tombstones 
on which the proof-readers have overlooked the spelling 
and who also deals in second hand habiliments. I sold 
it to him on the installment plan, for which I received 
one installment and the plan. 

Well do I remember my first sittingf with a specimen 
who invprled mv boudoir with a "Pav per inauirv frame- 
up." His policy and rugged honesty resembled just 



126 SOME CROOKS I HAVE KNOWN 

like a snake resembles a straight-edge. I sold him 
nearly ail the space I had because of a copywriter. He 
who had turned out such fascinating ad copy that it was 
likely the Saturday Evening Post would soon give Sam 
Blythe's space to him in which to make monkeys of 
Kipling and Carlisle with spreads of deep stuff anent 
a certain brand of rat poison. 

Space and time forbid that I go further with specific 
cases in which the purveyors of printer's ink and his 
money have held a kissing bee in the presence of the 
gentleman crook to whose presence the separation was 
chargeable. I want to say, however, that of all flim- 
flam artists who have trod the macadam since the 
farmers got wise to the shells, the book agent has 
all of them nine miles down the speedway with a bent 
axle and a dead engine. His game is one in which you 
slough the filthy lucre with more system and less noise 
than in any other in the world. When you come out of 
the trance you find that he has made your peace of mind 
as tranquil as a Juarez bull ring on Sunday evening, and 
you feel that you should seek out a gilded palace of sin, 
hang your left foot on the rail, your wish bone on the 
mahogany and fasten your system to a continued in our 
next number jap. You have proven to be such a fool 
when you are sober that you feel like staying pickled 
to the eye brows for the rest of your ink bespattered 
career. 

You may buck cotton futures until you are black in 
the face, play party of the second part in a game of 
heads I win, tails and you lose, and sit up nights tempt- 
ing twenty-dollar bank notes into the till of the gentle- 
man of the screaming neckwear and the noisy vest, but 
you have not started in the direction of the poor farm 
until you have met the artist who is lettins: a fev/ select- 
ed publishers have a complete set of the de luxe edition 
of the "Encyclopedia Gigantica" in sixty volumes. 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE 
JOURNEY 

THE trip to the last meeting of the American Phar- 
maceutical Association, to use the vernacular of the 
high grass country, was "some journey," especially 
for a man from Texas, who has to travel half a week on 
a fast train to get out of his own State. 

Was I impressed? Yes, I was suppressed, repressed, 
compressed, impressed and surprised that the sun which 
rises in Dallas can make its way to San Francisco by 
setting time. However, the deepest impression I an- 
nexed on the journey was probably made by the change 
in temperature that happened in the latitude of Colorado 
Springs, as it was here that I remember entering the Arc- 
tic regions; leaving Dallas on the last day of July, I left 
the temperature hanging close up to the top peg — a lit- 
tle above the hundred mark. I was upholstered in palm 
beach habiliments. I will say here for the benefit of the 
folks who do not sabe palm beach, that it is a substitute 
for clothes, worn extensively by men of the South, 
where the temperature has an altitude record that makes 
Pike's Peak look like a hole in the ground. 

These white rags in which I was draped passed 
muster, and did not seem to be any more conspicuous 
than the Pullman furniture until we crossed the Colorado 
line, when I noticed that people of both sexes looked 
at me suspiciously, and seemed to wonder if I were a 
harmless lunatic, a sufferer from prolapsus de intellect- 
um, or had merely climbed out of my berth and forgot 
to put on my clothes. This was an impression, but is not 
the one I am talking about. The impression that breaks 
rudely into my dreams to this day is the one that got 
a strangle-hold on my understanding when I "came to'* 
and found that my skin was a vast expanse of goose 
pimples, and that my knees were knocking and rattling 
like unwashered axles bumping over cobble stones. I 
thouo^ht I had contracted St. Vitus' Dance, spinal menin- 
:gitis, cr had a "Louisiana Shaker." 

127 



128 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE JOURNEY 

I hastily consulted my better half, who calmly re- 
marked that if I would put on some clothes it would 
help some. 

Another impression which comes (back) to me every 
time I get five hundred miles north of Denison, Texas, 
is that the officials of the Pullman Company have about 
as much to do with the goodness or badness of the ser- 
vice as a prairie dog has to do with the government of 
Madagascar. The keystone and king pin of Pullman 
comfort or suffering is the gentleman of Ethiopian line- 
age who can make you exclaim with pleasure or curse 
with rage as suits his fancy. 

On the first lap of the journey to San Francisco the 
service was calculated to put the efficiency expert in the 
army of the unemployed. The coffee-colored lad who held 
the comfort of the car in the hollow of his hand was a 
real honest-to-goodness "Nigger," "bawn in New Aw- 
leans," who could say "Yas Sah, Boss,'* and make a 
Southerner feel like he does when the band plays "Dixie." 
George was as black as a cyclone cloud, with a kinky 
head, lips like bologna sausage and mouth that could not 
have been wider without moving his ears back to make 
room. He could pat a pillow so it would take all the in- 
somnia out of your head, and mix a mint julep that would 
make the world look different; but we lost him in Den- 
ver, from whence he made his return trip. 

The second morning out I slipped into the smoking 
room with the "makin's," to curl a brown paper nerve 
sedative, where I met Dr. F. Ross Coffman, Health Of- 
ficer of the City of Denver, and Professor Washburn, 
Dean of the Pharmacy Department of the University of 
Colorado. Both of these gentlemen impressed me as be- 
ing men for whom no job in their respective lines would 
be too big. In the course of our conversation Dr. Coff- 
man pleaded guilty to once having been a pillroller. I 
arrived in Denver about nine hours late, missing my 
train to Salt Lake, and I am under obligations to Dr. 
Coffman for courtesies extended while getting things 
straightened for a continuation of the journey. 

Leaving Denver I soon had my first view of Royal 
Gorge. This awful scar in the physiognomy of the 
earth made me nervous, and I was in favor of wiring the 
railroad officials that it was my private opinion that op- 
erations should be stopped on this road, as it seemed 
that the earth was coming in two at this point, and that 
the two halves were just hanging by a thread. My im- 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE JOURNEY 129 

pression with it was that if it had a roof on it it would 
have held quite a bit of corn. Kansas farmers will do 
well to investigate. 

At Thistle Junction, an abbreviated municipality, 
where the grizzlies poke fun at the Civic League, and 
timber wolves chase each other up and down Main 
street, we spent nine hours, not because we were so 
"gosh bent" on seeing Thistle Junction, or interviewing 
the populance of that bailiwick that will never ruin Chi- 
cago as a commercial center, but rather because Section 
Number Six of train Number Nineteen had for some 
cause turned off to the left and gone right out in the 
woods, as a result of which it was scattered around the 
landscape. Six Pullman cars were calmly lying on their 
sides across the track. Nobody was seriously hurt, we 
were told by the natives, who witnessed the crash. There 
was quite a sprinkling of A. Ph. A. delegates among the 
passengers, who took an optical slant at Thistle Junc- 
tion. It was the opinion of Prof. Arledge, of Omaha, that 
a civic mistake had been made in trying to fit a town of 
this size into a canyon big enough to fit Omaha. He 
worried no little over the municipal misfit until he spied 
a weed that he had not met before. He fussed with the 
weed until the train started, when he cut out botanizing 
and invited us all to "Stop off at Omaha." 

On arriving at Salt Lake I ran into a kind of a mo- 
bilization of all the A. Ph. A. delegates from east of the 
Rocky Mountains. Here I discovered my fellow towns- 
man, Dr. Eberle, in company with the big chief of the 
Cherokees from St. Louis, Dr. Whelpley. These two 
mental giants were not worrying over the possibility of 
mercurials or the future of serum therapy, but at this 
particular moment were drawing great slugs of nervous 
unrest from a rumor that the dining car was to be cut out 
of their section of the train. 

The next thing that engaged my attention was what 
I took to be a hardened theatrical manager trying to 
make up a Pink Canary Company of chorus girls on the 
street. This handsome chap certainly surrounded him- 
self with a covey of theatrical poultry. On a closer in- 
vestigation I found that I was wrong, as it was Caswell 
A. Mayo of New York talking to a few friends. 

About this time a daylight burglar, Wm. B. Day 
of Chicago touched me for a handful of silver for an 
A. Ph. A. badge, which I pinned to the left fork of my 
pulley bone, and at once passed from the mutt division 



130 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE JOURNEY 

and became a regular guy. Up to this time most of the 
aggregation thought I was a train robber on a vacation, 
or was ''shoving the queer," touting green goods, or ped- 
dling gold bricks. After I fastened myself to the badge 
they all seemed to take it for granted that I was per- 
fectly eligible and as square a guy as ever jimmied a time 
lock. 

I was much impressed with the tabernacle in Salt 
Lake on account of its wonderful acoustic properties, 
though I am glad it is located in Salt Lake instead of 
Dallas, as I believe with its acoustics it would be impos- 
sible to sleep through a doctrinal sermon in it. 

Crossing Salt Lake one of the coaches threatened to 
topple over. The situation listened like a broken spring, 
but on investigation it was found that Dr. Anderson, of 
Brooklyn, and Mr. Godding, of Boston, were riding on 
the same side of the car, which made it run lopsided. Dr. 
Anderson moved to the other side, which balanced it, 
and all was lovely. 

We passed into the desert. I can imagine no more 
excruciating purgatory than for the lost soul to be sent 
to the desert to mourn throughout eternity in the lone- 
liness and dried up dust of the American Sahara. 
Speaking of loneliness, this is the source of the world's 
supply. There is more of it here to the square inch than 
any place I have ever seen. It is simply hanging around 
in hunks. If I were looking for loneliness I would never 
pass up this country. It is characterized by a disgusting 
sameness. Each new mile looks exactly like the last one 
covered. There is not even a Blue Jay Com Plaster sign 
to break the eternal monotony. An explorer of virgin 
territory and a conqueror of new worlds has about 
reached the ideal spot when he gets into a domain that 
is so far from the beaten paths of civilization that he is 
beyond the vision of those Weary Willies of the road, 
whose mission is promoting the sale of the little cotton 
rings that make your shoes fit and your feet happy. If 
the late Christopher Columbus could have seen some of 
the country that has been distributed along the West- 
ern Pacific, it would have taken a lot of kick out of his 
report to the friendly Spanish Senora, who soaked her 
sparklers and ankle watch in order that he might tear 
transportation out of her book. 

After leaving the desert we found that considerable 
of the route was underground, through a well assorted 
flock of tunnels of varying length. Tunnels are not ob- 



SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE JOURNEY 131 

jectionable to travel, except when one is taking up a lot 
of expensive space in the diner and trying to get one's 
money's worth before the white jacketed African puts one 
in bankruptcy. Dining where tunnels are so arranged 
that their black walls pass the window just as you start 
up with a fork full of potato salad is really humiliating, 
because you can never tell where you are going to put it. 
It is downright disgusting to run into the sunshine and 
find that you have filled your left eye with Thousand 
Island Dressing, or poured a pint of iced tea into your 
chest, using your standing collar for a funnel. 

California is, no doubt, the most wonderful State in 
the Union. It is rich in varied resources that range in 
financial importance' from gold mining to turning a tour- 
ist upside down, counting what falls out, and telling 
when his train leaves. 

I got many impressions in San Francisco; they came 
thick and fast, so fast, in fact, that many of them have 
escaped me. I retained one, however, same being that 
as an ideal location for lowering one's standard in Brad- 
street's book of financial batting averages, this una- 
bridged municipality gets a ribbon of the deepest blue. 
A plebeian worm of the dust from outside the State can 
separate himself from the bank lithographs with greater 
ease, more system, and less noise than in any place I have 
ever sojourned. 

California is a land of flowers and newspaper extras. 
The farmers' pest is the American Beauty Rose. He has 
to fight them to keep them from choking out the carrots. 
And a new "Yuxtra" is encountered on the slightest prov- 
ocation. The scoops range in sensation from finding a 
Kansas farmer and his Ford stranded in the desert to the 
release of a former municipal chief from penal servitude, 
provided he promises to stay out of San Francisco until 
after the election. More than once I gave up a penny, 
thinking, from the way the newsies were barking, that 
President Wilson had been assassinated, or that the 
United States soldiers had been unable to keep the cow- 
boys along the Rio Grande from mopping up with the 
saddle-colored bean-eaters who had refused to doff their 
sombreros and say "'Good morning" to the American 
flag, only to find that a potato culturist from Greely, 
Colo., had been found drinking the last drop of water 
from his radiator, and contemplating a long, cool draught 
of gasoline out in the big stillness, where he was very 
much attached to the spot on account of a stripped gear 
and a dead engine. It was very disappointing to give up 



132 SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE JOURNEY 

a perfectly good penny, expecting to get in return a page 
or two of recently made history, only to find that you 
have been made a victim of the heartless newspaper trust. 



ACROSS THE COUNTER 

YES, sir, I am a drug clerk. I have a pure white 
lamb skin, the emblem of torture and the badge 
of a pillist that was given me on graduation night 
for getting away with all the information at the knowl- 
edge works. I have a clearance from the State Board. 
I made that bimch of politicians look like a covey of old 
maids at a mother's congress when they began sounding 
my noodle on scientific pharmacy. Yes, I can give the 
formula of a compound cathartic pill and make anything 
Warburg suggested without the book. Tincture of Io- 
dine? Five hundred and ten grains to the pint and 
don't forget the Ki unless you're looking for trouble with 
the act of June 30th, nineteen hundred and six. I was 
rubbed into condition in one of the oldest colleges of 
pharmacy in the U. S. A., but was principally educated on 
this corner. I have been doing time in this human suf- 
fering parlor eight years the first day of next month. 
What are my duties? Everything from mopping the til- 
ing to making a trial balance, from man-handling a husky 
coke sniffer to squaring the house with a mad customer. 
I am a kind of main-shaft around here. I can always tell 
where the box opener is and I can tell how much sulphur 
there is in the basement without looking. I do every- 
thing from landing the best trade to hunting the boss' 
hat. Yes, sir, I can fix a leaky carbonator without cuss- 
ing and remember all about the prescription Mrs. 
Trouble had filled last Thursday. I do whatever there is 
to do. All kinds of people come in this store. The mob 
that surges in here put it all over the circus when it 
comes to variety. Do I study human nature? Say, 
friend, I am sorry for the chap who has a better line on 
the rabble than "yours truly." I have Sherlock Holmes 
backed into a siding and screaming for help when it 
comes to giving the populace the *"once over" and calling 
their numbers. I don't think anybody on earth, or else- 
where, has a better line of optical slants across the plate 
glass than I have, though none of us are a hundred per 
cent efficient on the Sherlock Holmes stuff. It don't re- 
duce your batting average to pull a bonehead occasion- 
ally, but, when you bat two flies to the same fielder in 
succession, the manager knows that you have sand in 
your gear box and it is time to take a brush at the cob 

133 



134 ACROSS THE COUNTER 

webs. When a large, rotund lady from "Dollar down addi- 
tion," with a terra cotta complexion and features that 
look like they were mad at each other, carrying a thirty- 
six-inch fish net shopping bag, containing three mouse 
traps, a package of Cream of Wheat and a carpet 

stretcher sidles up to the perfume case, a knowledge of 
human nature is worth a thousand dollars a minute. 
Regulation methods of attack are very uncertain with 
this specimen. My private system is to approach cau- 
tiously. A clerk should fix his face the same as when he 
holds four aces. He should let a faint smile of recogni- 
tion play over his features and make a kind of a for- 
ward pass saying, good morning, Mrs — Er — and let his 
voice simmer down into a kind of a happy purr. This 
makes the lady think that possibly the clerk remembers 
her as the leading lady in an attack of Presbyterian 
Vaudeville staged by flock out on Rural Avenue last 
Summer, where she made Geraldine Farrar look like a 
crippled Comanche squaw and got away with a bouquet 
of sunflowers as large as a shock of wheat as an inter- 
preter of the role of Juliet. Having progressed this far 
toward getting her to decorate the cashier's desk it is 
time to begin negotiations looking toward ascertaining 
what she wants to add to the shopping bag. You might 
think she was in quest of corn plasters, a package of sage, 
but it is a ten to one bet that she is looking for some- 
thing to make her more beautiful and aid in being, if pos- 
sible, a greater pet at the tea battles with society's dev- 
otees out on the interurban. The sales talk must be 
chocolate-coated conversation of the highest grade. It 
should begin something like this "Mrs. — Er — er, you 
have a beautiful skin and you should never tamper v/ith 
cheap face powders, you are fortunate, nature has been 
kind to you. I know Prima Donnas who would give a 
year's salary for your complexion." It is then time to 
slip her the little red box that is three dollars a throw 
and she will brighten up and say: "Hain't it a sight to 
goodness how these here toilet things cost, but I want 
the best." At this point the situation justifies saying 
this wonderful powder is made in Chicago by a perfumer 
who was chased out of Paris for making the best face 
powder in the French Capital. But do not think for a 
moment that this is a universal system. When it comes 
to laying the tape on human nature no two specimens 
measure the same. Everybody in the store gets a dif- 
ferent slant on a stranger. For instance, only the other 
day a handsome, well-kept specimen of the masculine 
gender steered himself against the smoke department and 



ACROSS THE COUNTER 135 

annexed a handful of three-for-a-half Havanas and every 
slave in tiie place was ready to call his number. The boss 
said he'd gamble a dollar to a dime he could write his 
past, present and future and not make a bobble. I was 
afraid the boss had met him until he said the stranger 
was the new owner of the cotton mills down by the 
river. The soda water man said he had never seen him 
before, but from the once over, a mental calculation and 
his judgment of human nature he would make it even 
money that he was the Governor of the State who was 
stopping over at the Eastland. The cashier powdered 
her nose, took a fresh grip on the chicle and said he was 
Bishop Somebody from New York, who was here to 
ride herd on some kind of special ceremonies at the 
church around the corner. They asked me for my opin- 
ion. I could not identify him further than that they were 
wrong. He was dressed like a prince, and the manner of 
a Chesterfield, but still he had M-u-t-t written all over 
him in letters a foot long. To settle the bets we asked the 
town pest who the gentleman was and found that he was 
the pet cab-driver at the City Transfer Company. When 
I speak of having a line on the human race I mean the 
regular, honest-to-goodness worms of the dust, everyday 
human beings. If I could read the brands and ear- 
marks and classify the freaks that come in here every 
day I would not be doing sixteen hours a day for thirty 
dollars per. I'd have an arm chair with a padded foot- 
rest down at the City National Bank, tipping the loan 
sharks where to put the money. Sometimes we go 
against a masculine mystery. We do not know whether 
to say, "What can I do for you," or "what can I do you 
for." Sometimes politeness is about as appropriate as 
pinning flowers on a dead burglar killed robbing an or- 
phans' home. There are more feminine enigmas in the 
freak division than there are masculine. The freaks that 
haunt the drug stores cannot be classified except that 
there are as many classes as there are freaks. Many o£ 
these mental deformities furnish ingrowing smiles and 
sleeve laughs for the druggist who has held on to his* 
sense of humor throughout the grilling experiences that 
are calculated to put him in the squirrel food section. For- 
instance, the little lady who, after a confidential state- 
ment of her symptoms asks which I think would be best 
for her, Scott's Ivanhoe or his Emulsion. I expect to die 
at the counter sometime from high blood pressure, occa- 
sioned by trying to keep the lid on my laughter. 

Do I like it? Say, I can't live anywhere else. Tried 
to shake the drug store game one time. The new job 



138 ACROSS THE COUNTER 

was an information bureau down in the Union Station. 
They raised my salary and gave me an upholstered snap 
with push buttons. All I had to do was sit on a high 
stool from eight until six and tell the Hicks which train 
to climb on to go to Punkville. The job did not furnish 
any thrills. I did not meet anybody that appealed to me. 
I got sore at myself and felt like a loafer working eight 
hours a day. The lure of the crowds, the whir of the 
fans, the clink of the glasses and the tang of the old game 
were eternally calling me. I dreamed of capsules and 
powders and copied telephone prescriptions in my sleep. 
An indescribable longing was eating the heart out of 
me. One day the boss told me that things were going 
to the bow wows pretty fast around the store since I left. 
I almost hugged him as I said: "Mr. Smith, if you want 
me to come back all you have to do is say the word," then 
I thought he was going to embrace me as he said: "I 
want you to come back and to show you that my heart 
is in the right place I will raise your salary." The 
prodigal who returned to his Father's house did not have 
anything on me when I landed back in my old place so 
far as being full of joy was concerned. Do I expect to 
always be a drug clerk? Not that you can discern. 
When I cleared for action here eight years ago I swore, 
barring sickness, to put five hundred dollars a year in the 
savings bank and that is one rule of my life I have lived 
up to and the little account has grown from an humble 
^beginning to nearly five thousand dollars and just be- 
tween us — not for the megaphone, there is a little girl 
liammering a typewriter for the Reputable Life Insur- 
ance Company down in the Anderson Building who has 
saved nearly two thousand dollars. On next New 
Year's morn we are coming in here together and lay 
dovm. seven thousand five hundred dollars in cash and 
our note for two thousand five hundred and ask Mr. 
Smith if he will take it and walk out, leaving the place 
clear of debt. If he agrees to do it we will go to the min- 
ister around the corner and have him put us both on the 
same meal ticket. 



GET THE HOOK 



IN the October issue of the Oklahoma Pharmacists' 
Bulletin, edited by Tom Roach, one of the wisest re- 
tail druggists in the Southern States, and managed by 
Walter Jarrett, who rides herd on the pill hustlers of Ok- 
lahoma, we note that one Wm. T. Goff takes an unkind 
poke at drug store workers. 

Now if Tom Roach had writtn the article in ques- 
tion we might stand hitched thinking possibly Tom had 
come down to the store on a bright Sunday morning and 
found the soda fountain coils frozen and bursted with 
nice carbonated water rimning out at the front door, 
two motorcycles in the shop and one messenger boy in 
the hospital from trying to "Make 'er jump the Lee 
Huckins Hotel," but this unwarranted punch don't 
listen like a peeved pillist but has the ear marks of a 
holler from a swivel chair philosopher who seems to 
know just about as much about a drug clerk as a union 
plumber knows about tuning a baby grand. 

If this jolt had come from the abbreviated pistol 
pocket pencil of Walter Jarrett we might stand for it on 
the grounds that the grocery store chaps down in 
Washita country were trying to beat the board out of the 
permit fees or Waltei" had left his Ford half way to El 
Reno with a bent axle and a dead engine from trying to 
ditch a gravel wagon. Any of the above predicaments 
might move either of these good natured fellows to say 
things about drug clerks and when thus peeved we could 
forgive them right or wrong, but when a chap from with- 
out the sacred realm thinks he can pour tobasco into the 
bleeding scalp of the drug store hired man without get- 
ting his hand called his batting average in a guessing 
contest would be next to nothing. A part of the Goff 
article rambles along as follows: 

"Who knows why? Just why average callers at 
drug store emporiums should be subjected to indifference 
and near impertinence by clerks, instead of interest and 
courtesy, is a tale yet to be told maybe. Still, I believe 
the case may be helpfully analyzed. In their places 
clerks are what they are very largely because employers 

137 



138 GET THE HOOK 

are but little, if any, better. Both are frequently from 
fifty to one hundred per cent ignorant of the rules of the 
game. They do not understand the principles involved 
in so serving the buying public as to accomplish the item 
of business building. The idea, ordinarily is that, the 
way to progress is to mix the tobacco business with the 
soft drink business, and these with the calling of the res- 
tauranteur, throwing the whole lot, and as many other 
things as possible, into the bag, and flaunting it all be- 
fore the public as a business of chemistry — a Drug Store, 
and proceed to ladle it out while pounding the cash reg- 
ister. Well, that doesn't measure up with right business 
ideals. Business-getting is only a preliminary to com- 
mercial success. For permanency, business-building 
must be one's ultimate goal. The goal of "repeaters" — 
making every buyer feel like coming again and again. 
Now, how many of you (understand that this publication 
is semi-private in character) consciously work to that 
end? Think it over, and be honest about it." 

The writer, having run the gamut of drugdom from 
mopping the linoleum to counting the coin, is ready to 
admit that there are some drug clerks who are just as 
pleasant as a bone felon on one's trigger finger, who 
look upon customers as a necessary evil and think that 
they should apologize for being on earth. The same 
thing, however, may be said of grocery clerks or the 
clerks in any other line of business. "Just why average 
callers at drug store emporiums should be treated with 
indifference and near impertinence" w^ill ever remain a 
tale untold because they are not those treated by drug 
clerks as a class as this article leaves one to infer. 

Following this fling at the clerks is one equally critical 
of the proprietors, in which he says both are frequently 
from fifty to one hundred per cent ignorant of the rules 
of the game. Wonderful, wonderful — that Mr. Goff is so 
wise to the rules of the game while the chaps who are in 
it three hundred and sixty-five days in the year should 
be so ignorant of it. It must be irksome to be so wise 
thereby, noting what fools other people are. The boiler 
plate copysmiths of the country are eternally harping on 
salesmanship and business building; we have known 
some who could write a forty page thesis on salesman- 
ship who could not sell umbrellas in a Galveston storm. 
We have often wondered why some of the long haired 
wide spectacled brigade don't build some business for 
themselves. They seem willing enough to exchange in- 
fallible rules for anything of value. 



GET THE HOOK 139 

Getting back to the drug clerk, we speak authorita- 
tively, having worn out several large oblong holes in the 
floor of pill tiles, hunted the city directory and sold ship 
loads of goods for hire and having employed drug clerks 
for nearly twenty years, we claim to know as much about 
the animal as Andy Horlick knows about malted milk. 

We wish to say that as a class drug clerks are far 
above the average hired vendor of merchandise in other 
lines. The majority of them are trained college men, 
courteous, intelligent and polite. They are close stu- 
dents of human nature and are able to handle efficiently 
and pleasantly the mob that surges through the average 
drug store every day in the year. 

Mr. Goff goes further and says: "They don't under- 
stand the principles involved in so serving the buying 
public as to accomplish the item of business building." 
Business building is the aim and purpose of every man 
in the business today, and we believe the same may be 
said of nearly all clerks. If we were going to stake a 
yman in the game we don't know a druggist or a drug 
clerk on the continent that we had not rather bet the 
price of a new store on than to bet it on any of the 
chaps who are in linguistic eruption anent the regulation 
league rules for operating a drug store, although not 
operating a single store themselves. When any man 
begins to tell the writer how to make a million he in- 
variably wants to ask him where he has his million 
stored. 

Tamping tepid atmosphere is a very pleasant pastime. 
There is hardly a barber in the country but who can tell 
Woodrow Wilson how to conduct the affairs of the pres- 
ent unpleasantness with the foam guzzlers along the 
Rhine and there are wind-jammers on every street corner 
y^ho criticise Pershing's way of doing things, yet if they 
had to win the war we'd soon be wearing the Hun yoke. 
Get the hook. 



SOME RETAIL DRUG STORE 
EXPERIENCES 

THIS story is not written because the crowned heads 
across the pond have demanded it. I have not been 
begged by every retail druggist from Powder River 
to the Brazos to turn State's evidence on myself in order 
that others may go and do as I have done. It is not writ- 
ten with a view to showing others the royal road to 
fortune. I have not even had "Numerous requests'* to 
add my track-record to the statistics of pharmaceutical 
history. In early youth my associates were principally 
cows, though I can not remember when a drug store did 
not appeal to me. Even as a half-wild prairie urchin 
perfectly at home in the high grass, but scared of town 
and town-folks, I would muster courage enough to ven- 
ture up and peep in at the bewhiskered old apothecary 
who always seemed busy mixing ointments, spreading 
plasters and making pills. The bug kept biting on me 
until my prowess with a branding iron and my ability 
to cut a neat swallow-fork, jinglebob, or underbit in a 
calf's ears ceased to furnish any thrills. I no longer took 
any pride in sitting on a bucket while he pawed up an 
acre or two of grass. My loss of interest in the great 
game in the cattle country was noticeable and the oracle 
of the outfit said, "Suthins' ailin' uv thet boy 'sides what's 
the matter with him ; sumthins eatin' on him." One day 
I asked the old apothecary how to get wise to the game. 
He said it was a long route with nothing at the end of it. 
He said the game was one in which it took four aces to 
get a dime. I suspicioned that the old prairie-dog was 
bluffing, and did not want anybody to know how to make 
pills. I hit him for a job (now called a position), and 
at the end of the negotiations I was put on the payroll 
and got my four dollars just as regular as Saturday night 
came around. It was here that I climbed off of a pony, 
learned to wear a collar and handle my feed with a fork. 
The old gentleman had quite a little laboratory, as his 
store was fifty miles from the railroad. 

For the first few weeks I was busy trying to handle 
my feet and hands. I spilled everything that would spill, 
and everything I touched turned over. I fell through 

. 141 



142 SOME DRUG STORE EXPERIENCES 

the plate-glass front while applying the chamois into a 
window display of holiday china. I pounded cork in an 
iron mortar, smelled the ammonia, and did all those 
things that go in the freshmen end of an apprenticeship. 
When I started to wait on a lady I invariably fell down 
over something, or tried to sell her a bunion pad when 
she asked to see the teething-rings. My greatest trouble 
and most grilling task was trying to look the part. Cus- 
tomers sidled off from me, and seemed to think I was a 
low-brow that had been called in to move some of the 
furniture, never dreaming that the old man would allow 
such a hick to stick around all through business hours. 
My packages looked like large, badly-made tamales, and 
many of them leaked, ^ch articles as tooth brushes, pen- 
staffs and paper weights. I almost lost hope of ever be- 
ing referred to as a pharmacist the first time I tried to 
wrap one of those long-handled hand-mirrors that the 
ladies use when taking a slant at the buttons between 
their shoulders. I used nearly a roll of wrapping paper, 
and when it was a finished package, most casual observ- 
ers not thoroughly conversant with my system of wrap- 
ping, would have taken it for a peck of turnips or a 
bundle of fruit trees. In due time I was led into the small 
cranny known as the office and shown the books. "The 
books" consisted of a discouraged-looking copy of Rem- 
ington's Practice of Pharmacy that was in fatigue uni- 
form, having lost its covers, a copy of the United States 
Dispensatory, several volumes of various works, ranging 
in importance from Peck's Bad Boy to Farady's Prin- 
ciples of Physics. 

I shall never forget one calm Sunday morning which 
is a part of my career as pill-heaver to the million. After 
I had had several months' experience, and could turn off 
the lights and walk around the store without breaking 
the furniture, I was left in complete charge of the plant 
on a Sunday morning. On this particlar Sunday morn- 
ing I was bustling around chesty and self-important, ac- 
cepting willing half of the responsibility of Atlas' job and 
wondering what would become of the world if it were 
not for me. As I swaggered before a full length mirror 
admiring a complete array of happy raiment, which in- 
cluded a tie, after the manner and color of Joseph's fa- 
mous coat that was calculated to wake people for several 
blocks around, there crossed the threshold of the em- 
porium an antiquated chunk of human driftwood — a 
sliver of human debris, commonly known in pill vernac- 
ular as a dust head or coke-sniffer. He was one of those 
noble animated wrecks, a shambling, magnificent ruin and 
the Beau Brummel of a thousand snow parties. He look- 



SOME DRUG STORE EXPERIENCES 143 

ed like a butt-cut of knarled oak that had lain by the 
side of the road for a hundred years. He said, "Loosen 
up kid, and slip the old man a whiff of dust." In my 
amateurish innocence I did not know whether he wanted 
talcum powder or aristol, and said to him: "I am hep 
to your lingo, but I ain't corrallin' your drift to no ap- 
preciable extent. I don't sabe what it is you are achin' 
for. Please call the brand and ear-mark plumb exact, or 
qualify me as a tenderfoot in this here pharmaceutical 
range." He stuck out his chest a few inches and said: 
"The illiteracy of the present-day drug clerk is irksome- 
ly appalling. As a master of medicinal therapy it is 
nauseating to my refined nature to note the inertia of 
the pharmaceutical mind, and the crudeness of the mental 
technique of those upon whose unworthy shoulders has 
fallen the exacting responsibility of dispensing the cura- 
tive agents for the relief of the world's afflicted." I said* 
"Stampede the Kipling sob stuff. This is not bein' re- 
hearsing parlor for the Merchant of Venice. You will 
please light around somewhere and tell me what you 
want a whole lot." He was hurting too much to carry 
the argument further, and acquainted me with the fact 
that the specific for his present malady was a dram of co- 
caine muriate,, without the acetanilid, please. Being com- 
mercially inclined, I ascertained that his batting average 
in Bradstreet was double nought, and refused to nego- 
tiate further with him until he shook loose some silver 
on the plate glass. This is the one towering bone-head 
of my career — the glittering of this conspicuous ivory 
still shines in my memory through the mists of the years. 
It was not bravery that caused me to stand up and tell 
a hungry habitue of snowy flakes that he couldn't get it 
without the cash — it was inexperience and a lack of 
knowledge of the drug fiend. I did not know that he 
and his kind would surmount any number of diffi- 
culties and even murder a man who stood between 
them and their supply of the drug that is meat, 
drink and life to them. This blighted giant as- 
sumed the demeanor of a tiger; his muscles tensed 
and his eyes flashed. He made a rake for my throat 
with a crooked-bladed dirk and failed to get me by less 
than an inch. I shot up the white flag with astonishing 
neatness and dispatch. I decided that he could have the 
store with its entire contents, and that if I could get 
him from between me and the door there would be 
nobody there but him very shortly. He quickly saw he 
was master of the situation, and that I was the victim of 
a kind of a mixture of St. Vitus dance and epilepsy. My 
features seemed to hold a grudge against each other, and 



144 SOME DRUG STORE EXPERIENCES 

my hair showed no signs of the effect of the military 
brushes that had been worked over-time on it for weeks. 

He said : "Don't get chesty with an old-timer. I was 
acting in self-defense; you were trying to murder me. 
I have to have the flakes to live." I tremblingly handed 
him a new ounce vial — an unbroken package fresh from 
the manufacturers. He pried the cork, poured out a 
palm full of the life-giving alkaloid, and with one long, 
heavenly inhalation it disappeared up into his nostrils. 
He at once became happy, and was profuse in his thanks 
for my kindness, and promised to hand me the price in 
a day or two. He walked with quick, firm step out 
through the back room, and I breathed a sigh of relief 
that he was gone and the experience over; but not so 
fast, the experience was not over. An hour or two later 
I had occasion to go to the back room, where I found my 
friend sprawled on a couch, and from all outward ap- 
pearances, dead as a mackerel. Here I could see myself 
making a last talk from the scaffold before the black-cap 
was drawn and the trigger sprung. Convicted of mur- 
der on circumstantial evidence, I flew to the telephone, 
called doctor after doctor, only to be told that they were 
out of town making calls in the country. I suffered 
all the tortures of a murderer. This was a fine thistle 
to grow up right at the beginning of my pathway as a 
pharmacist, and made me wish I was astride a cayuse 
and so far out in the grass that it would take two dollars 
to send me a postal card. I contemplated the town-talk 
that the old, long-legged kid down at Terrell's drug 
store had poisoned a man. There rang in my ears such 
remarks as, "That ignorant hick ought to be herding 
sheep instead of tampering with poison." I could see the 
business ruined because of my rash act, and my job fad- 
ing like a pay-train from the view of a tramp. I finally 
connected with one of the physicians, who was ten miles 
in the country, and told him to come at once, as a man 
was dying in the store. Taking me at my word, he wore 
his whip to a frazzle and drove his team almost to death. 
And never will I forget the expression that came to his 
face as he got a slant on the supposedly dying man. He 
turned to me and said: "Of course if you did not know 
any better it is all right; but if you think this is a joke, 
then I differ with you to the extent that I will dust out 
the place with you." However he could tell from my 
scared look and the unstableness of my knees that I was 
in dead-earnest, and did not proceed with hostilities. 
Since that day I have met many of the devotees of the 
flakey drug in the various stages of their process of un- 
doing. Among their number were men and women from 



SOME DRUG STORE EXPERIENCES 145 

every walk of life. I have listened to their stories when 
I had time, shooed them out of the store when I did not» 
and always kept a good natured club convenient in case 
of emergency. ^ 



THE DRUGGIST AND HIS 
TROUBLES 

YOU will no doubt think that I have some brains or 
a lot of nerve to tackle the above subject. I wish 
to assure you that I am shy on both. I attribute 
the selection of this subject to the fact that "fools rush 
in where angels fear to tread." 

To enumerate the druggist's troubles would be like 
taking a census of the sands of the sea. However, I could 
enumerate them if allowed sufficient time because, per- 
sonally, I have had them all. Job, the hero of Biblical 
record, is held up to the world as a man of troubles. He 
had boils, but he was never punished with leaky carbon- 
ators, wormy senna leaves and messenger boys addicted 
to cigarettes and hookey. He never had a bone felon 
on his brain from thinking about a note that is due at the 
First National Bank next Wednesday. He never tried 
to square the store with Mrs. Killjoy, whose temper is 
working overtime because some dreadful clerks, "don- 
chernaw" sent out the wrong kind of dog biscuit for the 
poodle. 

From both observation and experience I am willing 
to testify that in matter of troubles, the average retail 
druggist has our friend. Job of the sores, nine miles down 
the speedway with four blowouts and no gasoline. 

A druggist's troubles begin when he goes into busi- 
ness ; they never begin any more because they never stop 
long enough to begin again. A pharmacy certificate is 
a season ticket to the Garden of Sorrows. As a member 
of the State Board of Pharmacy I have signed these by 
the hundred. I have seen young men throw their hats 
away and shout with joy when given a certificate that 
entitled them to sell stamps and hunt the city directory 
anywhere in the State, but somehow I always had a pain 
under the neck tie from thinking that that poor inexper- 
ienced novice would later find his joy was about as appro- 
priate as pinning flowers on a dead burglar killed rob- 
bing an orphans' home. It is heartrending to see a lad 
jump the hayfields for drugdom, quit farming for phar- 
macy, exchange a good-natured corn planter for a pill 

147 



148 THE DRUGGIST AND HIS TROUBLES 

tile. He leaves a good job where he only has to work in 
daytime for one in which he is allowed to sleep a little 
while on the far-end of each night and one in which he is 
expected to give ten cents* worth of merchandise and 
ninety cents worth of service for a dime. When Alex- 
ander the Great went down to the edge of the sea and 
wept his red bandana full of brinies as big as base balls 
for more worlds to conquer, we believe he overlooked a 
bet — he would have been busy yet, if he had dried up his 
tears and started a drug store. 

I cannot remember any trouble that came my way 
before I climbed off a cow pony, learned to wear a collar 
and roll compound cathartic pills. Out in the high grass 
country, thirty-five miles from the railroad, I established 
my first trouble incubator, supposing that American 
Pharmacy would rear up on its hind feet and rejoice 
that I had entered its ranks ; I wanted everybody to look 
at me and be happy. I felt that I would be asked to 
O. K. the next issue of the U. S. P. and that the National 
bodies would consult me about every move they made. 

I was consulted, but not by the National bodies. 
Among my first consultations was one with a chap who 
was lugging an order book and a foimtain pen because he 
did not have nerve enough to crack a safe or rob a train 
and was too fat to climb porches. This youngster was 
insulated in about four hundred dollars' worth of glad 
rags that fitted, with a blue steel shiner in his shirt front 
about the size of a paper shell pecan that looked like the 
headlight on the mogul. He swam into my business bou- 
doir about 9:30 p. m. When I got an optical slant 
on this human confection, I was dizzy and trembling. I 
was sure that he was a foreign diplomat who had 
dropped off the Deadwood Stage to consult me about the 
coming meeting of the Opium Conference at the Hague. 
I floundered and gurgled and finally said "Good morn- 
ing." After he had played his first record with a fiber 
needle I became aware that he was Grand Potentate of 
the Confidence Perfume Company, Limited, of London, 
Paris and New York, Detroit and Squeedunk. He was 
traveling over the country on a mission of humanity try- 
ing to free the retail druggists of the U. S. A. from the 
galling chains of the perfumery trust. It was plainly 
visible that a drug store could not live long without this 
line, and then there was a solid mahogany show case free 
with the initial order. Under the spell of a line of choc- 
olate covered conversation that had the old-time book 
agent down in the dust begging for mercy, I felt myself 
slipping. It was a feeling such as you have while the 



THE DRUGGIST AND HIS TROUBLES 149 

whiteclad nurse is dropping the last drops of ether into 
your snout just before the eminent specialist in the dis- 
ease of men, women and children begins taking you to 
pieces to see how you are put together. 

Although my business was principally selling stock 
food and prairie dog poison, he showed me where to 
sign. I burned my John Henry into the bottom line of 
the pink sheet, fully satisfied that I would soon be able 
to take over the holdings of both Liggett and the Owl 
Drug Company. A duplicate was not necessary when 
doing business with the main breeze of the Confidence 
Perfume Company. When the invoice came I was sur- 
prised, knowing full well that I had not drank anything 
but water for weeks, and this invoice, due at once, looked 
like the bill for the opening stock of a wholesale house. 
It amounted to four hundred six dollars and forty-two 
cents. I afterwards learned that the six dollars and forty- 
two cents were to pay for the goods. The mahogany 
show case was made of pine and the plate glass was the 
kind used by farmers in tenant houses and the goods 
looked like the pile of toilet junk you see in the windows 
of Ikey Wisenstein*s kike store down on the bank of the 
river at the foot of Tough Street. It was a fine line of 
stuff — you could do anything with it, but sell it. I open- 
ed a bottle of Sarah Harden Perfume and the old familiar 
breath of wood alcohol stole through like the odor of a 
mad wasp. The face cream seemed to be principally of 
plaster of paris — a lady using it would have to keep a 
cold chisel on her dressing table with which to get it out 
of the jar. One day I was feeling generous in spite of 
my troubles, and when a couple of good lady customers 
came in, I gave each of them a bottle of that superb 
Joan of Arc Toilet Water and they were both profuse in 
their praise of my generosity. However, each of them 
phoned the next day to say that if giving them these 
fancy bottles of onion juice was a joke, it was a rough 
one, but was all right. However, if I though they used 
such vile stuff they would never come in my store again, 
and would send to Honolulu for face powder before they 
would buy it from me. 

It matters not how many troubles you have had, you 
are not even a good student of trouble until you have a 
ten years* post graduate course in a human suffering par- 
lor, meeting the millions and catering to their wants. 
Their wants reach from a teething ring for the baby to 
crutch tips for grandfather. A druggist is asked to do 
everything from the turkey trot to murder in the first 
degree. If they are afraid to ask the chief of police and 
ashamed to ask the minister, they ask the druggist. He 



150 THE DRUGGIST AND HIS TROUBLES 

is supposed to know everything from when their train 
leaves for Punkville to the tax rate in Yokahoma. 

However, all the troubles of the craft of pharmacy 
are not heaped upon it by others. Many of the troubles 
that come upon druggists are of their own making. 
There is, and always has been, a lack of co-operation 
among the knights of the mortar and pestle. It seems 
that they prefer to be hung separately than hang together. 
I believe that the man who keeps the drug business from 
being ideal, who makes it a life of slavery, is nobody but 
the druggist by himself. 

Back in bygone years, when I broke into the game, the 
State associations were in their infancy, and as I look 
around over the same associations today, I find that they 
are still tugging at the nursing bottle, though they are 
old enough to vote. Understand, I am not trying to heap 
abuse upon the other fellow ; I am merely trying to delin- 
eate truthfully the status of the most wonderful aggre- 
gation of pikers to be found on earth or elsewhere of 
which I consider myself Exhibit A, and entitled to the 
grand prize of the mutt division. 

We druggists seem to use our heads merely to keep 
our collars from slipping off. We can't seem to soak 
up the intelligence that "in union there is strength;" 
the philosophy of the bundle of sticks goes far above our 
heads. We fail to profit by the example of the horse- 
shoers' union or the Slop Haulers' Guild. 

An uneducated mass of men threatened to tie up every 
railroad train in the United States if they were not given 
an eight-hour day. They got the eight-hour day on a 
silver platter with a blue ribbon around it. Don't think 
for a moment that I endorse this. I merely offer it as an 
example of what the educated body of men that compose 
pharmacy of this country could do if only they all stood 
together for the good of the common cause. The drug- 
gist's dry-as-dust slogan is "I don't have time." Drug- 
gists have repeated this sentence until they believe it 
themselves. Did you know that the girl and babies are 
going to gather round sometime, while the doctor looks 
at you grimly and says, "There's nothing to do, old fel- 
low, but go. You have hit the ball too hard, and you are 
a worn out machine." Then you will have time. A 
little time for co-operation and a few days for your State 
association will cut down your troubles and it won't 
break you. If it will, then you are broke any way. This 
is the way to get rid of some of the troubles that beset 
us. A blot on the escutcheon of our honorable calling is 



THE DRUGGIST AND HIS TROUBLES 151 

noted when we look around us and see the small per- 
centage of druggists who are trying to lessen the drug- 
gists' troubles. The little good that is done in this di- 
rection is done by a faithful few who struggle along de- 
voting their time and those who do not help get as much 
benefit from their efforts as they themselves get, and this 
few usually get more curses than cheers. 

The druggists owe the State association a debt of grat- 
itude for whatever good has been done along the line of 
eliminating the trouble of the druggists. They owe the 
State association for the Pharmacy Law, and for every 
other protective measure they enjoy. The State Asso- 
ciation is the mother that nursed into existence every 
move for improved conditions. The State Association 
is the foundation on which the National bodies must 
stand or fall. The American Pharmaceutical Associa- 
tion, the parent body of American Pharmacy that brings 
together the wizards of the science of pharmacy, can not 
live without the State Association. The National Asso- 
ciation of Retail Druggists, that superb body of men from, 
the ranks whose mission is to see that every druggist in 
this country gets a fair deal, must be supported by the 
State Association or pass out of existence. The National 
Association of Boards of Pharmacy, the censor on the 
qualifications of the craft, is dependent on the State As- 
sociation for its life. 

In the State Association every man in the business has 
a chance to help eliminate the troubles that confront us 
as a craft. It is the keystone of the structure of phar- 
macy. Remove it and the structure will fall. Support 
from every druggist in the State to his association would 
soon produce conditions almost ideal. The association's 
greatest trouble is that it has never been able to enlist 
the support of the rank and file of druggists. It could 
be made worth a hundredfold more than it costs with 
proper support. I have always believed that the State 
Association should be made a clearing house for ideas^ 
and experience. It should have a trouble-day. I believe- 
one day, or at least one session, should be set apart for 
members to relate their discoveries, experiences and! 
troubles. Most every druggist is highly developed along- 
certain lines of business, either from natural trend or 
from experiences brought about by force of circum- 
stances. For instance, you may have a physician who 
prescribes barrels of infusion of digitalis, and you are 
called on to make this preparation many times every 
day. As a natural consequence of studying the crude 
drug, the process, and the finished product, it is not at 
all impossible that you will learn something about this 



152 THE DRUGGIST AND HIS TROUBLES 

drug that nobody knows but you. If you should do this 
you owe it to yourself and your fellows to donate this 
discovery to them in the hope that it may lessen their 
troubles. You may have discovered a better process for 
making solution of magnesium citrate than can be foimd 
in the books. Probably you know all about the care 
of cigars, and can make a Pittsburg stogy taste like pure 
Havana by proper moisture and temperature. If so, give 
your information to the clearing-house for the elimina- 
tion of drug store troubles. 

When a commercial porch climber with a grip full of 
phony samples comes into your place and sells you a 
car load of Dr. Frankenheimer*s therapeutic hair pins, 
guaranteed to cure every disease from pip to petromortis 
with a piano free, you should go to your State Associa- 
tion, take thirty grains of potassium bromide and tell the 
bimch all about it with a view to keeping the others from 
having the same trouble. 

It has been said that the Irish rule in every country on 
earth except Ireland. Sometimes I think the druggist 
looks after everybody's interests but his own ; he is good 
to everybody but himself. Instead of locking the 
troubles in his own heart, he should tell others of his own 
craft and kind. I spent fifteen years in the business, and 
all that time I was wondering why tincture of iodine 
was so hard to get into a bottle. One day a little fellow 
ivho owned a drug store so far out in the coimtry that 
the owls poked fun at the town council, in a town of sev- 
enty-five people if they had all been at home, told me to 
moisten the lips of both bottles and I would have no 
trouble. 

I have spoken of some of the troubles of the drug 
business, and there are millions more than I have not 
mentioned, but with all her faults I love her still. I will 
never live to see the day when the fumes of carbon disul- 
phide, assafoetida and salol will not cast a spell over me 
and carry me back to the troublesome days of pill mass, 
urethal suppositories, and the sixteen-hour day that I 
used to stay on the job. 

An Englishman, a Scotchman and a German are said 
to have been talking when the subject of nationalities was 
brought up. The Englishman said, **Don*t you know, 
old top, I am glad I am Henglish, though if I was not 
an Hcnglishman I would like to be an Irishman." They 
asked Pat "if you were not an Irishman whot would you 
be?" Pat said : "Faith, if Oi wuz not an Irishman I would 
be ashamed of meself," and today, if I were not a drug- 



THE DRUGGIST AND HIS TROUBLES 153 

gist I would be ashamed of myself. There is no nobler 
calling on God's earth than the one you gentlemen are 
following. 

(An address delivered before the Oklahoma Pharma- 
ceutical Association.) 



THE BUSINESS NEEDS OF 
PHARMACY 

AMONG the illustrious men who have chronicled 
the history of as noble a calling as man ever fol- 
lowed, but few have touched upon that phase of 
the business that constitutes the. very foundation on 
which success must be builded. The wizards of scien- 
tific research have taken the unlettered youth and led 
him throughout the mystic aisles and taught him the se- 
crets. Listening, wide-eyed and astonished, he has 
heard the story and seen the birth of an alkaloid; with 
trembling hand and brain alert he has beheld the wonder- 
ful transformations of chemistry ; with attentive ear and 
tolerant understanding he has devoured the wonders of 
serum therapy. He is tutored in the ethical relations that 
he must maintain toward his co-worker, the physician, 
in the field of usefulness. He is sent out into the world 
with the material for a great superstructure, though with 
sickening certainty, it must dawn upon him that he has 
no foundation upon which to build. 

The commercial needs of pharmacy have been over- 
looked. Our educators have discussed every requisite of 
success save one. The young pharmacist comes from the 
laboratory and lecture room with a knowledge of phar- 
macy that is superb. Before the State Board he dis- 
plays a knowledge of the process of pharmacy, the ac- 
curacy and thoroughness of which is beyond criticism. 
Yet to the veteran of the tile and spatula, who has been 
throwing bottles at the wall for a life time, he is yet a 
child, because with all the tutorship of the masters of the 
mystic art, he has never learned that the grand prize of 
the high calling is a meal ticket and a room key. He has 
traced rare chemicals to their sources and made them re- 
veal their identity but has never been enlightened on the 
subject— "How to Pay the Rent." 

To the gray-haired, practical druggist, the battle 
scarred graduate of the school of experience who has 
given humanity the once-over and recorded their num- 
bers on the pages of a retentive memory, the pride of 
Alma Mater and the wonder of the State Board is a joke. 

155 



156 THE BUSINESS NEEDS OF PHARMACY 

He looks on the young man as a matriculate in phar- 
macy's finishing school. He sizes him up from every 
angle, and with figures that do not lie, shows his real 
worth to a modem pill emporium is less than the young 
man could live on. The education of a pharmacist may 
start in a noble institution of learning that has to its 
credit nearly a hundred years of usefulness, but until the 
curriculum is changed, it must have its finish in a himian 
suffering parlor where the dollar is a part of the goal. 

The pharmacy schools of the country do not merit all 
the blame of the existing business needs of pharmacy. A 
part of this blame may be placed at the doors of the jour- 
nalists of the craft who have evaded commercial phar- 
macy with a reticence akin to silence. The editorial 
pages of our greatest publications are prone to discuss 
elaborately everything that pertains to pharmacy ex- 
cepting that one thing that is so needful, if we are to stay 
in the game — providing for the girl and the babies and 
gamer a few shekels for the rainy day. Contributing ed- 
itors from the ranks send hand-embellished orthograph- 
ical dreams about how to pack a percolator when really 
the howling need of the craft is a thesis on how to melt 
the bearings out of a cash register. The formula page is 
rife with methods for making everything but a dollar. 
We seem so fascinated with the work that we forget the 
wage. 

Successful proprietors have come to look on a college 
graduate as being a man capable of being educated to a 
degree that he will finally be able to steer a store clear 
of the breakers to success. So far, the colleges have sent 
us unfinished products and given us the task of teaching 
them the business of pharmacy. 

The writer does not wish to be misunderstood by 
having any one infer that we do not believe in the high- 
est standards of professional pharmacy. We would not 
for the world lower the plane of scientific pharmacy, one 
jot or tittle. But since seventy-five per cent of the 
business of a modern drug store comes from in front of 
the prescription partition, the business needs of phar- 
macy are at least as important as the scientific or pro- 
fessional needs, though they have never been recognized 
as such. A knowledge of the business end of pharmacy 
does not detract from the professional ability of a phar- 
macist. Because a man is able to call the alkaloids by their 
chemical initials and is versed in the technical process 
of pharmacy, should in no way hinder him from being 
thoroughly conversant with the legitimate dollar getting 



THE BUSINESS NEEDS OF PHARMACY 157 

methods of modem business. The man who is to come 
up to the standard of the pharmacy of today should be 
able to make a trial balance and a urine analysis with 
equal deftness. His inability to do so shows that he is 
only half equipped. Some of the best pharmacists of this 
country argue that the business or commercial end of 
pharmacy cannot be taught successfully in the schools, 
which we think is an error, because not so many years 
ago many of the proprietors were prejudiced against the 
college man in favor of the man who got even his tech- 
nical knowledge of pharmacy in a drug store. We have 
all seen this theory smashed into smithereens. We 
know that so far as the scientific side of pharmacy is con- 
cerned, the college men of today are well-nigh faultless. 
Our State Boards meet men who are wonders of scientific 
knowledge. If the great teachers are able to graduate 
men who border on scientific perfection, we know that 
men may be found who can teach business. 

Once the highest priced man on the pay roll of the great 
factories was the chemist who worked and loved into ex- 
istence the process by which the products were made 
This is not so today. The wizard who sets his own sal- 
ary, the man who is of greatest importance and who is 
worth whatever he costs is not the chemist — ^he is the 
man who is doing for the great manufacturing plants 
what somebody should do for pharmacy. He is the effi- 
ciency expert who conserves the company's interests by 
husbanding its dollars and teaching its employes busi- 
ness. 

The needs of pharmacy are not confined to a thorough 
knowledge of it as a science. That part has been well 
cared for. A pharmacist who is unable to go further than 
the preparation and dispensing of medicinal products can 
play but a small part in what we are pleased to denomi- 
nate pharmacy today. A very small percentage of the 
drug stores in America can be divided into departments 
in which the worker is required to do only the work of 
his department. The ideal pharmacist is the man who 
can do whatever there is to do. We do not believe that 
scientific achievement has been cheapened because our 
young pharmacists have not been equipped to meet the 
business needs of pharmacy. The vocation of a phar- 
macist is twenty-five per cent a business. Some of us 
are loath to admit this, but it is true just the same. 

To equip a man for the scientific end of pharmacy 
alone is very much like teaching a physician anatomy 
and sending him out into the world as a general prac- 



158 THE BUSINESS NEEDS OF PHARMACY 

titioner. He cannot succeed. He is not a master of his 
craft. He is only partially equipped for the work that is 
demanded of him. A pharmacist should be able to con- 
duct a pharmacy. When he is given a diploma, he is a 
finished product and should meet every demand of his 
calling. When a graduate of the engineering depart- 
ment receives the O. K. of the faculty he is ready to dig 
a tunnel, construct a skyscraper or build a railroad. 
When a student finishes the school of law, he is able 
to take care of himself and his client in any court in the 
land but when James Brown, Ph. G., winner of the hon- 
ors of the graduating class of nineteen fifteen, is placed 
in charge of a busy store on Main Street and told to make 
an inventory and render a sworn statement to Bradstreet 
of the exact financial condition of the business he feels 
like mailing the sheep skin back to the faculty with a 
request to please cancel the honors. He is up against the 
task of admitting his gross inefficiency. He must tell 
his employer that he can't do it. He must make a con- 
fession that is the most himiiliating one that any crafts- 
man ever had to make. _He must say, "I don't know 
how." He must acknowledge that the job is too big for 
him. This is enough to kill progress and crush every bit 
of punch and fighting spirit out of him. Is it any won- 
der that the pathway of American pharmacy is thickly 
strewn with financial wrecks? Can you marvel at the 
fact that a large per cent of the drug stores of this coun- 
try are insolvent and don't know it? There are stores 
that have been operated for years that have never been 
solvent. There has been no time since their establish- 
ment that they could have been sold for enough money 
to liquidate their debts, yet the proprietor thinks he is 
getting along fairly well and has never dreamed that he 
has been broke for years. Some druggists at the end of 
each year wonder why they have no money to show for 
a year of hard work, but they do not know how to find 
but. Our educators and the pharmaceutical press are too 
prone to stand aloof from simple commonplace business. 
Too many of us delight to delve into science and discuss 
the rare products that mean little or nothing to the 
druggist. We are servants of the craft and to say that 
so far we have served it poorly is putting it mildly. We 
do not mean by this that it is possible to make a finan- 
cial success of every man that enters the game. We do 
not expect the craft to ^et in the class of the steel trust, 
but we do think that a full fledged pharmacist should be 
able to conduct the average drug store without hanging 
out a distress signal when a business problem comes up 
for consideration. 



THE BUSINESS NEEDS OF PHARMACY 159 

Our ideal is a man learned in the science of phar- 
macy, who is able to make a statement showing the 
profit on the business for July with the same ease with 
which he shows the percentage of iodine in a specimen of 
the tincture. The plan of pharmaceutical education in 
vogue at present makes it necessary to employ two men 
to do what one should. After we have employed a grad- 
uate pharmacist to conduct a store, many times we find it 
necessary to go to a hardware store or a lumber yard 
and find a man who does not know whether a halogen 
is for soft corns or is a new name for the banana split, 
but one who can tell an asset from a liability without 
taking it to the laboratory. Merging the two men we 
get an efficiency that we should get from one. This con- 
dition grates on the nerves of the man who wants both 
the professional and business side of his business effi- 
ciently managed. The outlook is not bright to the young 
man who has spent two or three years in a college of 
pharmacy and on completing his course finds that he 
must serve an apprenticeship at a nominal salary to learn 
the business. Of course, there are a few places in phar- 
macy for the young man whose ambition is to spend his 
life wearing out a hole in the floor in front of the tile 
and who is satisfied with twenty-five dollars a week for 
dispensing physicians' prescriptions, but he is a long 
way from being an antidote for the business needs of 
pharmacy because the man who is satisfied with his sal- 
ary would be satisfied with his sales, and the druggist 
who is satisfied with his sales is finished. 

The want ad departments of the pharmacy journals 
and the daily papers are a glaring exhibition of the busi- 
ness needs of pharmacy. From these it would seem that 
all the drug stores in the country are for sale. We do 
not wish to be understood as believing that the colleges 
of the country should establish a course in lawn mowers 
and steamer trunks or that a chair of culinary science 
should be added with a course in cooking, leading to the 
degree of D. S. C. (Drug Store Chef). We do not ex- 
pect chili con carne to be made official in the new U. S. 
P. or that ham and eggs will ever invade the sacred pages 
of the National Formulary, but we do hope that in the 
near future the business needs of pharmacy will be rec- 
ognized and met by a system of business education that 
will equip the young pharmacist to fill efficiently the po- 
sition in the world's work for which he seeks to qualify. 



LETTER OF ADVICE ON 
RUNNING A NEWSPAPER 

DEAR BOB: As your tutor in the science of jour- 
nalism I must protest against the stillness of your 
editorial policy anent the unpleasantness on the 
other side of the pond. Throughout this entire war I do 
not remember that you have ever unpacked or polished 
up your invectives a single time. I cannot remember 
that you have exhibited a single column of fight pro- 
voking conversation since the Kaiser announced that he 
and God would accept the responsibility of running the 
universe. 

If you decide to be neutral in that you don't care who 
kills the Kaiser, I promise to see that no breach widens 
between you and Joe Albus. If over a stein of foaming 
Pilsner you should decide that the allies are wrong on 
account of the nationality of our own Peter Loran, I 
shall stand sponsor to Peter for whatever you do. But 
please do not disappoint me in your editorial efforts by 
keeping your fertile brain so hot with grape juice that 
you will long to follow in the footsteps of him who would 
stand pat and tell the murderers of American citizens 
where to go. 

Understand, I do not expect you to declare and start 
a war in Knox County, but Bob, look what an oppor- 
tunity you have to drain your system of all that editorial 
brain storm that has accumulated since you quit the Fri- 
day night debating society at Corn Hill School House 
back when Dabney Jawsmith pitted the intellects with 
you on the question, "Resolved, That Art is More Beau- 
tiful Than Nature," when you fairly boiled over with ar- 
guments to the effect that nature had art nine miles down 
the speedway with a bent axle and a dead engine. When 
you cited the fact that were it possible to call from the 
realms of the dead the spooks of Michael Angelo and 
Raphael they could not protray upon canvas the likeness 
of the beautiful, daintily petaled wild rose as it is painted 
among the crags and rocks by the master hand of the 
great artist from whom all inspiration must come. 

161 



162 LETTER OF ADVICE 

Of course, at this time, you were fired with the en- 
thusiasm of youth and possessed the superb vernacular of 
Alfred Henry Lewis, the eloquence of a Grady and that 
mystic power that aided Shakespeare in seeking out and 
portraying in readable and fascinating colors the work- 
ings of the human heart. You had carefully meandered 
through the mysteries of Alice in Wonderland and ab- 
sorbed the philosophy of Huckleberry Finn. But my 
dear Mr. Ragsdale, why grow old? Now that you have 
a chance to vend a refined grade of the bovine derivative 
to real folks, why don't you pull yourself together and 
start something? You know now that all the trousers 
with worn knees were not made so praying. Many of 
the wearings on the knees of that garment that is known 
throughout the Christian world and a part of Kansas as 
a mark of masculinity received the knee scars from 
kneeling in front of the refrigerator to see if there was 
another long necked vial of that gently foaming, amber 
colored liquid that grows wild in Milwaukee. 

In case you are averse to burning up the warring na- 
tions of continental Europe, I would suggest that you 
jump on the Democratic party about the floods in 
Wichita Falls or charge the present administration with 
your recent hailstorm. If none of these suit your kit of 
English, then there are cigarettes and women's clothes 
that have been relegated to the twilight sleep to be 
awakened at any time they would help an editorial de- 
partment pack a house or bolster up a pulpit. 

In case none of these should strike the keynote of 
your mentality, then as a last resort there is meat for 
breakfast and modern dancing to which you can hitch 
a string of invectives as long as the moral law. These 
are subjects that have pulled editors out of the hole since 
Herodotus of Egyptian fame sat at a roll top desk as city 
editor of the Cairo Evening Prevaricator. 

My honest opinion is that the best way to put a week- 
ly newspaper on the map is to "say things." Of course, 
it may take a ten-ton truck to haul the rocks, sticks and 
bombs from around your office and attempts may be 
made to burn you at the stake, but you can always have 
the sweet comfort of knowing that you made the natives 
sit up and take notice of the fact that you were on earth. 

Steer yourself clear of suffragettes and prohibition as 
these are the only questions that are liable to send a 
youthful editor to the potter's field. The chief objection 
to letting Minnie and Blanche in on the voting game is 



LETTER OF ADVICE 163 

that they would want to fix a ballot with a hand em- 
broidered ruffle on it and spray it with Mary Garden 
perfume, put it in the ballot box and then come back and 
change it several times before the polls close. There is 
nothing to say for or against prohibition as all that could 
be said has already been said. If you should decide to 
take the dry route, there is no chance for you to dent the 
intellect of the staunch friend of the Dry Martini and 
the exhilarating Manhattan as these to the anti are good 
for whatever ails you. If you should decide to favor the 
wet contingent, some dry adherent who believes that a 
"Nigger Governor" is better than a damp one is likely to 
stick a meat knife under your right shoulder blade and 
give it a twist. 

Bob, I think you should try to appreciate this ad- 
vice I am giving you. You are a curled darling of for- 
tune. A favored victim of circumstances. Look at Ar- 
thur Clendennin, R. M. Johnson and Oscar Martin, all of 
these poor fellows are struggling along trying to get in 
the limelight without my assistance. In closing I would 
warn you not to tackle the historic art or monkey with 
poetry. 

With very best wishes and hoping that you get the 
paper out without cussing the engine, cleaning the plugs 
or grinding the valves, I am, 

Your preceptor, CUZ. 



164 MISCELLANEOUS 

SOME FACTS ABOUT THE DOCTOR. 

THE DOCTOR is the first person we meet when we 
come into this world, and, unless we go out by acci- 
dent or other unexpected summons, he is the last 
with us when we leave it. Such devotion is worthy of 
the highest praise, and that is often about all the doctor 
gets for it. Still, he keeps at it, because practice makes 
perfect, and a doctor without practice isn't worth much. 

Who the first doctor was is not known, but he must 
have arrived shortly after the devil broke into the Gar- 
den, because before that there wasn't any need of him. In 
other words, a doctor is a matter of necessity. When 
you need him, oh, say, but you do need him, and if he 
had the nerve to present his bill just after he had pulled 
you out of the hole— one of those holes, you know, with a 
marble top to it — you would be glad to pay any amount 
he might ask. But later you feel some different, and 
you charge him with graft when he charges you with a 
sum which would have seemed small enough when you 
thought you were going to lose it all. But this is to a 
considerable extent the doctor's fault, because he should 
never let a patient get well enough to feel frisky like 
that until the bill is paid. That is one reason why doc- 
tors so often need the money, and doctors have expenses 
to meet just as other people do, though they never have 
any doctor's bill to pay. 

This is owing to the fact that the ethics of the profes- 
sion forbid one doctor from charging another for profes- 
sional services. Right here comes in one of the greatest 
temptations a doctor is called upon to resist, to-wit, re- 
pairing one until he is as good as new and getting noth- 
ing for it, when by quietly letting his drop out, he might 
not only get rid of a competitor, but obtain much of his 
practice. But no instance is on record of any doctor 
doing this. Really, don't you know, doctors are not 
nearly as bad as people in debt to them say they are. 

It is common talk — very common — that the doctor is 
inj league with the undertaker, and that you might as 
well begin to pack up for the long journey when the doc- 
tor comes around. But plain business sense controverts 
this fallacy. "Live and let live" is the doctor's motto. 
De mortuis non payabus, which, being translated, means : 
"The dead ones don't pay." True, some of the live ones 
don't, but some do, and never a dead one does. A grave- 
yard may mean something to the undertaker, but it 
doesn't to a doctor. 

In conclusion, it may be stated, without fear of suc- 
cessful contradiction, that while there has been wonder- 



MISCELLANEOUS 165 

ful progress made in all branches of medical science and 
practice, mankind goes on dying about as usual, and if 
the dead were as gr^eedy as the living are in grasping as 
much of the earth as they can get hold of, there wouldn't 
be any room for the live ones. 

A TENNESSEE HERO. 

IT HAS developed that the greatest hero of the blood- 
iest war in history is a youth from the mountains of 
Tennessee. The most lovable feature of this hero is 
that he does not seem to know he is a hero. He does not 
seem to think that cleaning out a German machine gun 
nest, picking off more than twenty German soldiers and 
bringing in more than a hundred Hun prisoners, single- 
handed, after his comrades were all killed, is anything out 
of the usual. This mountain boy refuses all honors, and 
will submit to no lionizing because of his brilliant deed. 
It is said that when he landed in New York, and the 
people wanted to wine and dine the great hero, he said : 
*'Nothin' doin'; I want to see the subway, then I want 
to go home and see mother." When he returned to his 
home in the mountains of Tennessee he promptly married 
the shy mountain girl who had been his sweetheart from 
childhood. He was married by the Governor of Tennes- 
see, and it is said that neither his mother nor his bride 
had ever ridden on a train or been in a city before. 

We have often wondered how the writer-folk builded 
so many beautiful characters in the Alps of America, but 
as the years go by it ceases more and more to be a won- 
der. These characters don't have to be built among the 
simple mountaineers; they are already there; they grow 
there. The Tennessee mountaineer may be unlettered 
and unlearned, and have no accomplishment beyond his 
ability to shoot the center out of a dime as far as he can 
see it, but such courage and such characters as these 
people possess are not to be found anywhere else on 
earth. They could teach the world great lessons of 
which we, with our boasted civilization, education and 
culture, are entirely ignorant. The immortal Bob Taylor 
was a product of these same mountains. 

THE TRAVELING SALESMAN. 

IF WE WERE asked today to designate the most im- 
portant link in the chain commercial, we would say 
the traveling salesman, and if there is anything we 
would plead with a retail merchant for, it is to establish 
a closer relationship and a better acquaintance with these 



166 MISCELLANEOUS 

commercial ambassadors upon whose efforts depends the 
success of every venture of the commercial v^orld. With- 
out these men, the wheels of industry would cease to 
turn. Stop the commercial traveler for five years and the 
civilization of the world wil retrograde more than it has 
progressed in a hundred years. 

Traveling men are commercial explorers who blaze 
the trail for the products of the world's factories ; there is 
not a good seller on the market today from which the 
merchants reaps a goodly profit that was not once a 
stranger to the marts of trade. It had to be introduced, 
to use a modern expression, it had to be "put over." Who 
put it over? The traveling salesman who believed in the 
product and who was big enough to make the merchants 
believe in it. 

The traveling man of today is not merely a salesman 
with a price list and an order book; his mission is not 
merely to sell so many gross of this and so many gross 
of that; his work covers a far wider field than the mere 
selling of goods; he is a walking compendium of infor- 
mation. He is the greatest educator in the world. He 
may be a graduate of Yale or he may be an undergraduate 
of the log school house. This matters little, because his 
real education has come from the school of experience. It 
is profitable to ask salesmen questions; we do not mean 
merely questions regarding the goods they sell, but about 
many other things such as store management, store ar«- 
rangement, and a thousand and one other things that 
contribute to the success or failure of business. You will 
find men who have seen the stores and studied the prob- 
lems of the business from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf. 
They have seen how others have done things in other 
sections of the country. 

For instance, you might ask a seasoned veteran of the 
road to outline the best method of keeping a close tab on 
the amount of stock on hand and he would tell you that 
Jim Finneran in Boston does it this way, Charley Huhn 
out in Minneapolis does it that way, Adam Wirth in New 
Orleans another way, while Billy Willman in Browns- 
ville has still another way. He is showing you how some 
of the most successful men in the country handle the mat- 
ter. He is giving you information that is rare and hard 
to obtain, and from all of the methods shown a merchant 
should be able to find one exactly suited to his individual 
business. 

Commer-ce cannot live without salesmen. Endowed 
with millions of capital, one might build the most effi- 



MISCELLANEOUS 167 

cient plant in the world, he might surround himself with 
the best brains and manufacturing talent to be had, thus 
equipped he could manufacture the finest of products, but 
if it were not for these knights of the grip his factory 
might as well be an ant hill in the Sahara desert and his 
experts a bunch of idiots from the nuttery. Goods do not 
pay a profit until they ar«e sold and the biggest man in 
the game today is the man v/ho sells the goods. It is 
easy to get factory experts. To manufacture good mer- 
chandise is not a serious problem, but the captains of 
industry are combing the world for men who can sell mer- 
chandise. In thus speaking of the modern commercial 
traveler we do not mean that as a class they are wingless 
angels, that they ar'e all as straight as dies and square as 
bricks — like every other class of men they have among 
their number a few coyotes who are parading in the 
habiliments of merino lambs, like every other craft and 
calling they have a small number who work because they 
are afraid to rob a train, but the rank and file of com- 
mercial travelers who represent reliable houses and who 
can go back over the same territory year after year in- 
creasing the business, are a bunch of American gentlemen 
of the first water who are not now and have never been 
appreciated to the full extent of their value to business. 

If we should presume to offer advise to the merchants 
of this country we would say : "get close to him." 

THE THINKER 

THE most valuable man in the business v/orld today 
is the man who thinks. This is not only true of the 
business world but of every line of human endeav- 
or. Brains cost more than biceps for the reason that they 
are worth more. There will always be enough clerks in 
every drug store to ask, "Where are the nail files?" 
"What became of the big spatula?" "Where are those 
bathing caps?" The clerk who is most likely to event- 
ually own the store is the one who answers these ques,-^ 
tions right off the reel. The clerk who remembers tl^at: 
the store only sold a part of a gross of thirty-six-inchi 
flags last Fourth is in position to tell the boss that he hadl 
better go a little slow on this size. And when he ex- 
plains why the boss is sure to appreciate it. The clerk 
who remembers that the last gross of two quart fountain 
syringes were in stock nearly a year before they were 
sold and says so when the rubber goods salesman comes^ 
is helping his employer more than if he worked hours 
overtime. It is head work that increases the pay check. 
It is the thinker that makes the business succeed. We 



168 MISCELLANEOUS 

do not mean by this that work with the hands is not 
necessary. We do not mean that a clerk should side- 
step real labor. The labor of the drug store is of the 
smallest importance. There are thousands who are will- 
ing to work with their hands for a small wage rather 
than work their minds. The man who has nothing 
more than the work he can do with his hands to recom- 
mend him to the man who signs the pay checks has a 
slender opportunity to get anywhere in the drug game 
today. He is on a par with the automaton who can toss 
mud out of an eight-foot ditch and get eleven dollars a 
week for it. He has a shade the best of the coal heaver 
in that he does a little! less work and gets a little more 
money for it. 

The wooden Indian type of drug clerk will always be 
plentiful and is no more in competition with the thinker 
whose head is working than Jaysmith Junction is with 
Chicago as a commercial center. Hardwood is valu- 
able for some things but as material for human heads it 
fails to qualify in first place. A brain is considerably 
like a pitching arm, if used it grows in strength and effi- 
ciency, if not, it atrophies. The man who never taxes 
his brain or works his mental machinery to capacity soon 
becomes merely one of the world's population. Just a 
grain of sand on the beach of time. Brain work is the 
only work worthy of the name. In the business of 
pharmacy physical labor is recreation that makes the 
worker enjoy his meal ticket and appreciate his room key. 
The tiredest man among the working million is the man 
who sits in an arm chair all day. The chief incentive to 
work is remuneration. Head work is the best paid. 
Joseph P. Remington could probably get two dollars a 
day for driving a dray on the streets of Philadelphia. 
Mr. Edison could likely command four dollars a week as 
a coal passer on a man-of-war. Drugdom is a very poor 
market in which to sell brute strength, most buyers are 
looking for brains. Thinkers are the architects of the 
world's progress. Upon them depend the conditions of 
National life. Thinkers are writing the world's history 
each day as it passes. The druggist who thinks is the 
druggist who will win. The youngster who can't find his 
own hat or remember where he put the box opener need 
never expect to put the chain stores in bankruptcy as a 
competitor. 



MISCELLANEOUS 169 

FISHING. 

IS THERE a word in the English language quite so 
thrilling as "Fishing"? One says the keenest pleasure 
in fishing comes from the anticipation while digging 
bait. Be this as it may the writer believes that fishing 
is good for everybody. It is our earnest conviction that 
every druggist in this country, however busy he may be, 
should take time to go fishing. There is so much to 
fishing besides fish. It does not matter whether one gets 
a bite or not; fishing, like some medicines, is good for 
whatever ails you. When we say fishing wo do not mean 
the kind that requires four hundred dollars worth of 
equipment, we do not speak of fishing in the light that it 
is understood by the average papier mache city sports- 
man who thinks he should be dressed for the occasion 
from lingerie out with a change of habiliments for each 
kind of fish angled for. When we say fishing we mean 
the kind we learned when our wardrobe consisted of one 
complete change, same being made once each week, when 
our discouraged trousers were supported solely by one 
lonely gallus and our locomotion was seriously retarded 
by a large juicy stone bruise on our left heel. The word 
"Fishing" is Greek to any man who did not learn the art 
under difficulties, such, for instance, as to have mother 
sew our shirt collar hard and fast with number eight 
thread to keep us out of the creek; this looked effective 
to mother, but we soon accumulated a needle and a 
spool of number eight of our very own. When the best 
is to be gotten out of fishing one should slip off from 
every body and go alone to a shady bank where the silence 
is seldom broken save by the quarreling of a red bird or 
the basso profundo of the bull frog who announces in no 
unmistakable tones that it is sundown. 

Of all the men in this vale of tears who need this 
panacea for the ills of life there is not one who needs it 
worse than the druggist. The cash outlay for equipment 
for real honest-to-goodness fishing, including a plug of 
good eating tobacco, should not exceed a dollar and thir- 
ty-five cents. The sneak should be made out the back 
way some evening toward the middle of the week when 
business is dull, with a long cane pole and an old potas- 
sium citrate can full of squirmers dug in the back yard. 
Find a comfortable place in the shade and stay until it is 
too late to show up at the store until next morning. If 
they are biting, fine, if not then you are still away ahead 
of the game. Try this a few Wednesday afternoons and 
if it doesn't help you then you for a big sunny room in 
the southwest corner of the human repair shop with a 



170 MISCELLANEOUS 

couple of trained nurses giving you some of your own 
medicine. 

A NEW USE FOR AN OLD CHEMICAL. 

WHO OF US cannot remember the days long gone 
when we were the sworn enemies of Epsom salts, 
back when Mother used to make a glass of per- 
fectly good water taste like black death, by dissolving 
in its limpid depths a few spoonfuls of this pernicious 
disturber of our stomachic equilibrium? Our idea of 
supreme punishment for our bitterest enemy would have 
been to give him a sip of this atrocious potion Ad libitum. 
A draught of this nauseating curse of youth was the 
penalty for indulging in the unripe watermelon, the tannin 
laden young peach, and the green apple which we are 
now persuaded was sufficiently citrous to pucker a punc- 
ture in an automobile tire. 

When Skinney, Slosh, Buster and Splint met us in the 
vicinity of the calf pasture and plans were made for shak- 
ing the shackles of civilization for a short space of time, 
even the anticipation of a few hours in high grass Bo- 
hemia was not sweet because from our subconscious na- 
ture there came the hint of the penalty for stolen sweets, 
and there stole along our tongues and back to our palates 
a suggestion of magnesium sulphate, and sure enough, 
one grind of our molars, or one moan in our sleep, and 
we were awakened to contemplate a small china mug 
around which a painter had entwined a wreath of violets, 
and into which Mother had poured three ounces of water 
and one ounce of the white crystal cur'se. More than once 
we have wished we were a crippled cow, a stray dog, or 
an unidentified Mexican corpse in a rocky ravine when 
confronted with a flagon of this rural catholicon. 

We wish to add here and now that our views regard- 
ing personally imbibing the stuff have not changed in the 
least, nor have we had a dose of it since we have been 
big enough to fight. We rejoice over a report from the 
Rockefeller Institute to the effect that a 4 per cent solu- 
tion of Epsom salt has been found highly efficacious in 
the treatment of tetanus or lockjaw. Here's hoping that 
some use will be found for the rest of the output not re- 
quired for tetanus, such as making explosives, or taking 
the place of capital punishment. 



MISCELLANEOUS 171 

SERVICE AND THE HIGH COST OF LIVING. 

MANY of the people who marvel at the high cost o£ 
living do not stop to consider the service that pres- 
ent day merchants render to their customers. They 
seem to forget that in the so-called "good old days" of 
what they are pleased to denominate reasonable prices, 
when they bought merchandise merchandise was about 
all they Eot for their money. 

American merchants in every line have sought to make 
the purchase of merchandise easy for the purchaser. 
Such trade expressions as "you are as close to our store 
as you are to your telephone" have contributed heavily 
to the present soaring cost of living. The time was when 
we thought of buying the things we needed, we thought 
of going to the stores and bringing those things away 
with us. Not so today. We go to the telephone and 
order the goods we want delivered in the house. Mer- 
chants compete with each other in delivering purchases in 
the shortest time. More advertising money is spent by 
the retail trade today advertising service than in adver- 
tising merchandise itself. It is common for a customer 
to visit a drug store, buy a tooth brush and order it sent 
out. Service costs money. The immense number of 
wagons, trucks, automobiles and motorcycles required 
to deliver the goods sold by retail stores today accounts 
for a very large item in the expense of living. 

Americans love luxury and convenience and merchants 
were quick to realize this. With most of us it has been 
more a matter of service than of price. We often hear 
it said: "Well, Jones' prices are high but he has good 
service." The cost of living has advanced, but the living 

has also advanced; the housewife who used to take a 
market basket and visit the grocer and the butcher buy- 
ing and bringing home her purchases now has her pur- 
chases delivered and naturally the cost of men and equip- 
ment for delivering the goods must be paid for and there 
is only one way for the merchant to pay fop it, and that 
is to add the cost to the price of the goods he sells. It is 
not fair to compare the price of living today to what the 
cost of living was twenty years ago. There is a wide dif- 
ference in the cost but there is also a wide difference in 
what one gets for his money. Business is no longer a 
mere matter of buying and selling merchandise. To this 
has been added the very expensive item of producing a 
service that will satisfy the exacting customer. 



172 MISCELLANEOUS 

THE EDITORIAL COB PIPE 

OH, thou source of editorial inspiration! Thou odor- 
iferous tool of the architect of public opinion! 
Thou from whose snoring depths come the brain 
throbs that shake principalities, demolish thrones and 
seek to establish the age of Ann and the ownership of 
the prescription ! At thy shrine I kneel. When fears be- 
set and doubts assail, my trembling hand digs among the 
proof sheets to grasp thy familiar shape. Thy once noble 
stem of cherry is now wrapped in sticky tape to stop the 
leaks at every joint; thy noble bowl which, with "'Show 
Me" has made Missouri famous, is blackened with the 
smoke of many brands, and the pith from thy bottom, 
long since burned through, is stopped with an aged cork 
marked "Carter's Ink." In the eyes of the world thou 
art not much to look at, but to me thou hast more 
enlightenment than Athens, more beauty than Venice, 
and more history than Rome. True, in the female for- 
um, where assemble more wrinkles than roses, the fem- 
inine high brow hath declared in grating voice that thou 
art the rival of the assafoetida, the limberger, and the 
skunk, but as thy martyred champion. I can but ex- 
claim, "God forgive them, for they know not what they 
say." Thou art the true companion of a man's man. 
Thou hast no kinship in the cork-tipped stink stick with 
which inexperienced youth thinks it pays tribute at the 
shrine of Empress Nicotine; there is no similarity be- 
tween thee and the oily black Havana that sheddeth 
ashes into the ink jug or the syrupy plug that streaketh 
the chin and spattereth the editorial shirt front. The 
gilded meerschaum and the polished briar are not of thy 
tribe, but are the painted playthings of the childish am.a- 
teurs. Oh, Jane Gunter, may we not live to see the day 
when thou are denied us ! 

UNIVERSAL PEACE 

VICTOR HUGO said : "A day will come when the 
only battlefield will be the market open to com- 
merce, and the mind opening to new ideas. A day 
will come when bullets and bomb shells will be replaced 
by votes, by the universal suffrage of nations, by arbi- 
tration of a sovereign senate, which will be to Europe 
what the Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, 
the Legislative Assembly to France. A day will come 
when a cannon ball will be exhibited in public museums 
just as an instrument of torture is now, and the people 
will be astonished how such a thing could have been. A 
day will come when these two immense groups, the 



MISCELLANEOUS 173 

United States of America and the United States of 
Europe shall be seen extending the hand of fellowship 
across the ocean, exchanging their products, their in- 
dustry, their arts, their genius, clearing the earth, peop- 
ling the deserts, improving creation under the eye of the 
Creator, and uniting for the good of all these two irre- 
sistible and infinite powers — the fraternity of men and 
the power of God." 

Is it too much to hope that this great man's prediction 
is to come true? Is this the last time the dogs of war are 
to be unleashed? Is this the last reign of the monster 
that is clawing at the vitals of continental Europe? 
Would that war could be eliminated from the world and 
the ballot supplant the bullet, as predicted by the great 
Frenchman. War is as inconsistent as it is hellish. 
Science burns the midnight oil to preserve the health and 
prolong the life of man in peaceful times yet that same 
science is lashed into the work of devising tools for 
wholesale murder in times of war. The chemist, the 
greatest of the world's scientists, who delves into the 
mysteries of the elements evolving products so useful to 
mankind must reverse his purpose and bring forth pro- 
ducts capable of the greatest destruction to human life. 
The physician spends a lifetime perfecting a process or 
studying a disease with the hope that his efforts may save 
a few lives while war sacrifices thousands of lives in a 
day. The blighting hand of the monster has left its scars 
on the nations of earth as unerasable as the stars in the 
sky. War throttles our boasted civilization and drags us 
back to barbarism. The progress of 2,000 years is repu- 
diated and undone in a day. War is wrong, it is in direct 
opposition to every judgment of man and every law of 
God. 



THE PASSING OF JACK LONDON 

IN the recent death of Jack London this country suf- 
fered the loss of one of the greatest writers of the 
age. A characteristic of his writings was the fact 
that his books were inspired by and based upon actual 
experience. Jack London's knowledge of the Alaskan 
wilds and of the South Sea Islands did not come from 
the Sunday paper. His characters were flesh and blood 
and not the children of a vague imagination. He delin- 
eated truly the character of the primeval man far from the 
influences of education and civilization. Shakespeare 
possessed no more of the mystic power of seeking out 
and portraying in readable and fascinating colors the 
workings of the human heart than did Jack London. In 



174 MISCELLANEOUS 

addition to possessing a fertile brain, a keen perceptive 
and great power of description he also possessed brute 
strength that led him to tramp across continents study- 
ing conditions and getting information first-hand. Jack 
London was a man's man, his character was without 
veneer and his tales without varnish. While he knew 
every type of man his broad view of the human race was 
occasioned by his association with the men of the great 
out-of-doors. In addition to knowing the Eskimo, the 
South Sea Islander and the peoples of the remote parts 
of the earth, he was a student of science, especially the 
science of medicine, of which he possessed a profound 
knowledge. It is indeed sad to think that there will be 
no more "John Barleycorns," no more "Call of the 
Wilds," and no more "Sea Wolfs." Jack London is dead, 
but he has builded to himself monuments in his works 
that time can never obliterate. 

MOTHER AND THE GIRLS 

MOTHER and the girls must be catered to in any 
modern business. Mother and the girls spend at 
least seventy-five per cent of the family bank 
roll nowadays. The purchases may be for Father, but 
Father is in the producing department with nothing to do 
but see that the family finances stay out of the red. 
Mother and the girls are expert buyers. They get more 
for Father's money than Father could get. If you sold 
Father a box of cigars with three broken ones in it 
Father would frown when he found them, and that 
would be the last of it. When you sell Mother or Nellie 
a box with three broken ones Mother or Nellie will come 
lugging them back, and Father will get credit for the 
bum panatellas. There is a vast difference in selling 
goods to Mother and the girls and selling Father and the 
boys. Father and the boys take everything for granted, 
while Mother and the girls are from Missouri. In many 
families Mother and the girls make buying a business; 
they know merchandise and prices, and have a keen 
sense of values. 

This should not be objectionable to the merchant, be- 
cause if his goods are meritorious and his prices right, 
he should not object to the keen intelligence of his cus- 
tomer, as that intelligence values quality which the ig- 
norant do not appreciate. 

Advertising now-a-days should appeal to the feminine 
mind, be it for face cream or men's clothing. Window 
displays should appeal to women whether the goods dis- 
played are for woman's use or not. When you see a 



MISCELLANEOUS 175 

woman looking interestedly into a window full of men's 
shoes, remember that she has a husband, father, brother 
or sweetheart, who is sure to get a style tip as the result 
of her look at the window. The beauty and artistic ar- 
rangement of a window may not soak in on a man._ He 
may look for a long time at a badly arranged, junky 
looking window because there is something there that in- 
terests him, but when woman, the biggest influence that 
effects the retail business today, comes along, the poorly 
arranged, inartistic window won't get much of her time. 
She is artistic in her taste, and would pass up a standard 
article of merchandise on account of the way it was dis- 
played and take chances on getting it elsewhere. Many 
a store has received a black eye because it did not ap- 
peal to women buyers. The drug store is no exception to 
the rule. Women are buying shaving cream, cigars, 
razors, in fact every kind of merchandise for men. The 
modern woman's business is her home, for which she is 
purchasing agent, and if you want your cut in the fam- 
ily funds don't overlook Mother and the girls. 

THE ORIGINAL COST 

THERE is a tribe of calamity howlers who break 
into the newspapers with sickening regularity with 
a holler about some proprietary or patented article 
hat costs three cents and sells for fifty cents. Buyers of 
these articles undoubtedly find them worth what they 
pay for them or they would not continue buying them. 
The steel that goes into the making of a certain safety 
razor is probably worth not more than five cents, yet 
when the finished product reaches the consumer the price 
is five dollars, and there are plenty of men who would 
pay fifty dollars for their favorite safety human ivy an- 
nihilator rather than do without it. This is not a ques- 
tion of what the original cost happened to be, but is a 
question of what the consumer regards the article as be- 
ing worth to him. 

This wheeze is an old one, dating from the time when 
a Yankee took a penny's worth of wire and made a 
twenty-five cent mouse trap. It has been used with great 
zest since it became fashionable for husk-throated re- 
formers to knock proprietary remedies and toilet prepa- 
rations. They have an inherent hankering to rush in and 
save Mrs. Goodlooker from high priced face dust and 
nose paint that cost only three cents to produce and for 
which she pays two bones the box. Now if the dope and 
the price suit Mrs. Goodlooker, where do busybodies get 
their license to become butinskies. There are so many 



176 MISCELLANEOUS 

warm-air vendors that are trying to get Atlas* job away 
from him. We have known a patient to pay a physician 
five dollars for a prescription that called for four ounces 
of boric acid solution and then pay a pharmacist fifty 
cents for the medicine. This patient paid five dollars 
and fifty cents for less than half an ounce of boric acid, 
and at that time five dollars and fifty cents would have 
bought twenty-five pounds of boric acid. The physician 
in this case was one who had spent many years in the 
study of diseases of the eye and the patient got many 
times the value of his investment, although the thing he 
got for his money cost less than a half cent. It some- 
how does not soak in on these would-be saviors of the 
country that you pay for brains in every manufactured 
product you buy. Most of them have been touched by 
the wizard hand of the chemist who brought into exist- 
ence the process by which the product is made. Ignor- 
ance, brute strength and awkwardness are cheap com- 
modities, but when you propose to become a buyer in 
the brain market you may as well prepare to come loose 
from some coin. Manhattan Island sold for twenty-four 
dollars once, though some head waiters in that vicinity 
now get that much permitting you to speak to them. 
Grape juice is a plebeian beverage at almost nothing a 
flagon but when it gets carbonic acid gas in it and is 
dragged from a silver basket of crushed ice amid the 
strains of refined Hungarian noise, when the company 
is mellow and the hour too early to be late and too late 
to be early, well it runs into money and nobody kicks at 
a bone a bubble. Nobody has a holler coming who gets 
what he asks for at the price printed on the label. 

THAT MEAN LETTER 

In the course of business, little tiffs and misunder- 
standings come up. A transaction, or a letter, makes us 
sore; we go forthwith and write those people just what 
we think of them. In the language of the grandstand, 
"We bawl *em out." We make the letter and the lan- 
guage as mean and hateful as we can possibly devise. 
We comfort ourselves with the ever-present "I'll show 
*em — wonder what they think I am, or guess they must 
think I belong to 'em." This letter precludes forever 
any chance of re-establishing the friendship that for- 
merly existed. It makes any future get-together impos- 
sible. There is not a business man in the world today 
who does not need all the friends he can get. A man's 
enmity is not an asset : it is a liability, and one line of a 
mean letter may put him on your debit side for life. 



MISCELLANEOUS 111 

A business letter of inquiry, minus the brimstone, will 
correct ninety-nine per cent of the trouble, where the 
scathing denunciation will widen the breach to where it 
can never be closed. There have been made and printed 
enough rules to load an ocean liner to capacity, but there 
is one rule that covers the ground better than all others 
together, same being the golden rule. However, we be- 
lieve every man should write mean letters. Most of us 
are confident that we have a line of fight provoking con- 
versation that puts all others to shame, and that will no 
doubt make the recipient of the mean letter get down on 
his knees and beg our pardon. It is so reasonable to ex- 
pect a fellow human being to do this when he has re- 
ceived our meanest letter. 

In writing mean letters there is a course of procedure 
that must be followed, else the effect is entirely lost. The 
proper modus operandi is as follows: Write the letter 
quickly, for fear you decide not to do it. Polish up your 
meanest adjectives and call into play all the vituperation 
in your system. Write all the hateful things you can 
about the man or firm, and wind up by saying, "You 
know more about yourself than I do, hence may con- 
sider this tirade a compliment." When this letter is 
nicely written on good stationery by a perfectly inno- 
cent stenographer, lay it on your desk and read it twice 
a day for three days, then tear it in small bits and put 
it in the fire. You have no idea how hateful and small 
and cheap you will begin to appear to yourself along 
about the second day. There is nothing that does a man 
more good than to write mean letters if the above in- 
structions are followed religiously. 

TEXAS 

Every now and then some loquacious, leather lunged 
Jingo gets himself all "het up" and attempts to dis- 
course with great elaborateness on the vastness of the 
domain of the Lone Star. Most of the con-smiths think 
they are "out west" when they get to Pittsburg, and their 
idea of a heluva hunk of domain is New Hampshire, 
which is smaller than El Paso County, Texas. To e:et 
down to brass tacks and tell the truth about our "Lil 
ole state," she is 740 miles high and 825 miles wide at the 
waist line. She contains 266,000 square miles of terri- 
tory and spends more for cigarettes than half the states 
spend for groceries. 

Turn Texas around on a pivot at Texline and 
Brownsville will stop 60 miles north of Milwaukee. 



178 MISCELLANEOUS 

Spin her around on a pivot at Wichita Falls and Louisi- 
ana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kan- 
sas, Arkansas, Arizona and New Mexico will be wiped 
from the map. 

Carl Meyer in St. Louis wired Fred Burnett in Galves- 
ton to go to Amarillo. Burnett wired back, "Go there 
yourself, you are closer than I am." As a member of 
the district pharmacy board of the Jumbo District the 
writer was once called upon to go 315 miles to hold an 
examination. 

Lay out Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana north from 
Brownsville and the three states won't reach Dalhart. 
Stack Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, 
District of Columbia and Pennsylvania west from Tex- 
arkana and Pittsburghers will still have a passport to get 
a bottle of Mescal. If Texas were a Navajo blanket it 
would cover New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah, 
and still leave room enough on the edges for Oklahoma. 

NERVE 

Nerve is to man what reinforcing steel is to concrete. 
The mammoth pillars of the skyscraper would crumble 
and fall but for the twisted bars of steel that reinforce 
them. Many a man who is a success today would be in 
the gutter but for the nerve that is in him. Nerve is the 
thing that enables men to come back in the very teeth 
of the storms of adversity; it puts fight into them that 
refuses to be whipped, or rather stay whipped. It is no- 
table in the student who starves and fights his way 
through school, in the merchant who, from a small be- 
ginning builds a great business, and even in the patient 
who fights for his life until the crisis is passed. In our 
own profession we have no more shining example of this 
manly quality than our own John Uri Lloyd, the great 
scientist whose first experiments were conducted with a 
retort made from his mother's dish pans with a transfer 
tube made of pumpkin stems. This does not look as 
though Mr. Lloyd had a gerat opportunity to become one 
of the greatest scientists of his day and age. He did not 
have a great opportunity, but he made one of it. There 
should be something in this to stimulate nerve in all of 
us. Look around you and see if you are not satisfied 
that you have a far better opportunity to make a success 
of your business than John Uri Lloyd had to become a 
great scientist. None of those around us who have at- 
tained success had a special dispensation of providence, 
their success was not accidental, it did not "just happen," 



MISCELLANEOUS 179 

but came from that do and dare quality which we call 
nerve for want of a better name. Nerve makes a man do 
all he can. It brings into play the last drop of energy he 
possesses, and until this is done no failure is an honor- 
able one. We believe that few of the failures in business 
came after the unfortunate had done all he could. 

THE DRUGGIST THE GOAT 

That the druggist is the angora for the whole world is 
proven in the every-day routine of his life. Some grafters 
make a specialty of fanners, others of physicians, and 
still others are adepts at the art of separating the young 
and inexperienced from its shekels, but none of them over- 
look the corner drug store. Every beggar in Christendom 
has a cut and dried wheeze that he spills to the druggist. 
Druggists have fed enough of their hard earned lucre 
into the coffers of so-called charity to have fixed them 
for the rainy day. If the druggist is lucky enough to be 
able to attend church on Sunday in addition to all the 
beggars who have touched him through the week he finds 
that the text is, "It is more blessed to give than to re- 
ceive," and that an endless chain has been arranged that 
goes to the bottom of his boot. 

When Mrs. Busybody, who spends time everywhere 
except at home, starts out to do chur^ch work, soliciting 
funds to send enlightenment to the "niggers" in Madagas- 
car, she starts by hitting the corner drug store, because 
she buys about a dollar and forty-five cents' worth of nose 
paint each month and figures the druggist will be afraid 
to turn her down. 

When Dr. Fribblewhiskers, who has held everything 
from the bankership in a crap game to a revival, and has 
done everything but work, comes to town to deliver a 
lecture on the whatness of the wherefore, the druggist is 
stung for tickets, even though he can't attend and maybe 
his wife's wardrobe is not up to the standing owing to 
his philanthropy and she can't go either; so all he gets 
is a little perfunctory chin music about being progressive. 

The widow who washes for a living comes for a little 
medicine for a sick child and gets it, although the drug- 
gist knows she will never be able to pay for it, and she 
gets more tomorrow and finally the bill amounts to a 
considerable sum. If she showed up at the window of the 
First National Bank and asked for half as much as the 
druggist gave her they would think her mind was failing 
and pass her a line about united charities. If we of the 
mortar and pestle are to win prizes at a live stock show 
we should enter in the goat division. 



180 MISCELLANEOUS 

DRUGGISTS AND VACATIONS. 

IF NOBODY ever made a mistake, women would not 
change their minds, there would be no rubbers on lead 
pencils and there would not be a crank in the tool kit 
of every self-starter. 

At this time when the well-known American who is 
an alien from work and a stranger to exertion faces a 
"work or fight" edict, when drug clerks are about as 
plentiful as Democrats in Philadelphia, the druggist can 
take a retrospective squint at the years that have flown 
and note one great mistake he has made. He can show how 
easily he could have taken a vacation several years ago, 
whereas this year he is asking the boards of pharmacy 
to provide some way for him to have a meal occasionally 
that is to be served outside the prescription case. The 
druggist who slaves continually without rest or recrea- 
tion is by no means the most successful either from a 
scientific or financial point of view. The most success- 
ful druggists we know in the country are the ones who 
plan things ahead and these plans always include a little 
rest and recreation some time during the year. 

There has never been a machine made that would run 
on for years without stopping for repairs. The toughest 
Spanish mule from the Mexican cactus ranges cannot 
work all the time, and where the druggist gets the idea 
that he is an iron man and can stay eternally on the job 
and succeed is more than we can understand. 

The busiest physician in the city has his vacation. If 
his office is full of patients he walks out and leaves them 
without a fear of some other physician getting them away 
from him in his absence merely because he has left them 
in the other physician's care while away resting. 

Some druggists seem obsessed with the thought that 
the world would actually stop revolving, the sun cease to 
shine and business go to the bow-wows if they were 
absent from their stores for a couple of weeks. This 
is not the case, the world will wag right on, the sun will 
shine and the business will increase, from the increased 
capacity of the druggist for work and the optimistic view 
he takes of things when he comes back rested. 

It is not necessary to cross the continent or to seek 
expensive resorts in order to give one's mind and body 
a rest. Go out in the woods out of reach of the postman 
and out of earshot of a telephone. It does not cost much 
money. Most druggists have automobiles and could 
snatch several little breathing spells during a summer 



MISCELLANEOUS 181 

as a result of which they could think clearer, work better 
and get more out of life. Try it. 

HECK ROGERS 

There are exceptions to all rules. Heck Rodgers was 
the head fiend and holding corporation of the Spaghetti 
Pharmacy down in the plank walk district where the 
houses were numbered with barn paint and the populace 
wore what it pleased and spat many lingoes. Heck sold 
more plug chewing tobacco, dime an ounce perfume and 
Big Bad toilet requisites than anybody in the city. He 
had a prescription business that was coveted by big 
down-towners. The Spaghetti Pharmacy looked like it 
had been arranged by an earthquake and the goods 
placed with a coal scoop. The place was interesting from 
the viewpoint of geologists and soil experts. The Italian 
National Bank was strong for Heck because he brought 
his deposits in a jute epsom salts bag every evening at 3 
o'clock and three of the bank's desk climbers were de- 
tailed to help him count it and make a duplicate of de- 
posit. Heck was a real business man and shaved every 
Saturday. 

He loved the luxury of a large succulent hunk of 
guzzle-weed and blew himself for eight dollars* worth of 
wearing apparel every spring and fall. Heck did a cash 
business. All it took to get goods from Heck was the 
money on the mahogany. He kept no books as he paid 
the drivers when they delivered the goods and all he 
knew about his business was that he had a certain num- 
ber of thousand-dollar credits at the bank that he did not 
have last year. One day fate hit Heck below the belt, 
and he took the count. An efficiency expert got a side- 
hold on him; they cleaned up the store, put in new fix- 
tures and Heck went broke. Moral: Don't try to pass 
the mob angel's food when they want onions. 

GREAT DECREASE IN DRINKERS 

IT is said that a prohibition official has given out the 
statement that prohibition has decreased the number of 
consumers of liquor from twenty million to two mil- 
lion five hundred thousand. To the casual observer that 
looks as though seventeen million five hundred thousand 
former guzzlers of the cup that cheers, had climbed on 
the wagon and were sitting steady. However, on second 
thought, we are not so sure that the edict fathered by the 
much touted noble son of Minnesota has put that many 



182 MISCELLANEOUS 

on the rusty, creaking wagon. We do not believe that 
the prohibition official took into consideration the fact 
that likely a large portion of these missing faces from the 
bar room floor are now reliable bootleggers who know 
what the stuff is and are aware that it is made to sell 
only. We do not believe he counted the several million 
home-brwers who ar now toying with death on their own 
hooks, in their own basements. He has no doubt over- 
looked the throng who never drank the vile stuff unless 
somebody else paid for it. There are also a great number 
of boudoir hounds who are soaking wifie's violet juice, 
attar of rose and wrinkle eradicator. The Palm Beach 
bunch don't count; they strain their eyes for the tramp 
steamers from the Bahama Islands, likewise those, who 
go to Cuba for "rest." 

He has no doubt failed to count the prohibition en- 
forcement agents who are part time bootleggers, who are 
advise to the stuff and stay off of it as a beverage. He 
probably was not aware that there are quite a sprinkling 
of tramp chemists who know how to pack a couple of 
loaves of common baker's bread into a glass percolator, 
pour a quart of tincture of iodine through it leaving the 
iodine and the starch of the bread all in the percolator 
as starch iodide while the clear limpid grain alcohol 
trickles through as pure as when it was mixed with the 
iodine crystals. This swivel chair hero of statistics no 
doubt was ignorant of the fact that a quart of spirit of 
nitre dashed into a shallow pan of aqua bullions gives its 
ether off into the air, while the alcohol mixes with the 
water in about the same percentage as is contained in 
well-aged Bourbon back in the days when liquor was so 
common that most people did not care for it. He prob- 
ably was not wise to the fact that most of the denatur- 
ants of the denaturing formulas can be distilled out. Such 
statements should not be given out as it is not possible to 
say with any degree of accuracy what the decrease in 
drinking has been, or whether or not there has been a 
decrease. Such statements can but remind us that 
"Marse Henry Watterson" once said "there are three 

grades of prevarication, lies, d ned lies and statistics." 

There are so many sources of alcohol on which prohibi- 
tion officials cannot get a check, they range in impor- 
tance from the wonderful corn land that is reputed to 
produce as much as two hundred gallons per acre to the 
kraut barrel which has been tipped off recently by a 
Gotham hotel man with the intimation that the pickled 
cabbage has considerable authority. 

It is doubtful if drinking has decreased with prohibi- 
tion. The country used to be wet in spots ; now it seems 



MISCELLANEOUS 183 

to be damp all over. Liquor sales used to be confined 
largely to cities, now, it seems that most hamlets have 
a chance to patronize home industry when their thirsts 
are working. It is the constitution that Mr. Volstead 
amended, the amending process does not include the 
booze heads. 



JOHN BARLEYCORN LEAVING TEXAS 

ANOTHER considerable hunk of the land of the free 
and the home of the brave slipped into the dry 
column last month when going-away-parties were 
held in a number of heretofore damp Texas municipali- 
ties in honor of the departure of John Barleycorn. 

John was an old citizen and had quite a few friends in 
the domain of the Lone Star, but it is believed by most 
careful observers that he possessed about two enemies 
for every friend he had. His enemies have been very 
bitter ones and have been after his angora for a good 
many years. It has seemed, however, that his friends 
have been fully as smart as his enemies have been bit- 
ter and have been able to head off all deportation schemes 
for John until the development of the sentiment that sol- 
diers should not have liquor. Texas, although the ac- 
credited "wild and woolly" State, had great stretches of 
territory in which liquor had been tabooed for many 
years. From here out there are few damp spots in her 
far flung area in which the festive Dry Martini, or the 
exhilirating Manhattan Cocktail may be imbibed. 

The fizzy foam plants that heretofore have brewed that 
gently foaming amber-colored liquid that cheers, are en- 
gaged in making non-intoxicating beverages with which 
the novice might burst his belt waiting for the kick that 
is not there. We are bidding a last farewell to the white- 
shirted, diamond-bedecked smiling merchant who invar- 
iably opened up a bundle of broad grins, and emitted a 
friendly chuckle with his "What's yours?" No more, 
will Texans puHy bone the mahogany and paw the brass- 
rail while fastening their corporal systems to a state of 
exuberance not known outside the gilded palace of glit- 
tering mirrors, clinking glasses, old oak and burnished, 
silver, at least not in Texas. The beady glass and the: 
foaming stein are but memories now, pleasant memories; 
probably to a few, but cursed memories to thousands 
more. 

There are boys and girls in Texas who will eat whole- 
some food and wear comfortable clothes, to whom in the 
past square meals and new garments have been rare 



184 MISCELLANEOUS 

luxuries. There are frail women in Texas who will leave 
the wash tub and the ironing board because John Bar- 
leycorn is gone, and the marital partner will get home 
Saturday night with all of his pay check. There are busy 
factories in Texas that will open Monday morning with 
every man on the job fit as a fiddle and ready to work. 

There is a shade of sadness, however, to the passing 
of the saloon:: What will become of the parasites who 
have had prohibition as a political issue on which they 
averaged saving the country at least once every two 
years since Washington's monument was a hitching 
post? Who can't remember the campaign ranter who 
with one hand on his heart and the other on his pocket 
flask of "forty rod" plead for the youth of the land and 
begged the yeomanry of the commonwealth to save the 
race by casting its ballot for him? The veteran political 
flim-flammer who lay awake at night trying to decide 
whether it would be best to be a prohibitionist or an anti 
is now a pitiful figure in Texas, far more pitiful than the 
liquor dealer whom the edict has put out of business, 
temporarily. The saloonist may come back with a hard- 
ware store or an eat shop but since there are no pro or 
anti prejudices to appeal to, he, of the stentorian wheeze 
and dramatic gestures is left without a leg to stand on. 

This drouth in Texas is a natural consequence of the 
■^rend of the nation, and only proves that this giant of the 
"Southwest is a regular fellow, normal in every sense of 
the word. It has been several years since the Governor 
^f North Carolina has said anything to the Governor of 
South Carolina, much longer in fact that it had been 
when the Governor was talking before and no doubt the 
conversation on this particular matter is ended forever. 
Good-bye, John, we know you are going to be gone a 
long time. You are going to be away from us longer 
than you have been with us; it is all right, though, be- 
cause there are so many more people in Texas who don't 
want you here than there are who do, that we cannot 
keep you here and be democratic. 

THE DANGER OF ALCOHOLIC MEDICINES 

NOW that prohibition is spreading over the country 
at a very rapid rate, certain boiler-plate copy- 
smiths are very much alarmed and are sounding 
the warning that those formerly addicted to the cheering 
Martini, the salubrious gin fizz and the Sazerac will 
quickly switch to proprietary medicines which contain 
alcohol. 



MISCELLANEOUS 185 

Truly, Hell hath no terrors like a penny-a-liner who 
lias run out of something; to say; in this wonderful dis- 
covery, Percy Pinkpencil has a made to order prejudice 
to which he may appeal and thereby stretch his meal 
ticket out considerably. The king space filler on the 
Morning Prevaricator has discovered another flock of 
>vindmills against which to hurl a sulphurous tirade of 
mildewed, warmed over adjectives such as are commonly 
used by the home fans for denouncing the imported um- 
pire. 

The peculiar thing about the lurid account of the de- 
mise of the once strong, unsophisticated man who tippled 
himself into the family lot in a local cemetery with sar- 
saparilla, is that nobody is able to get a line of direct in- 
formation on him. He is a kind of mythical, dreadful ex- 
ample that is handed around from one copy scrambler to 
another. He frequently dies in different parts of the 
^country as a result of using first one kind of package 
medicine and another. He has been the subject of more 
close attention by the yellow hammers of the press than 
any of the alleged millions who have been killed because 
they refused to "kick in" to Sparticus Jawsmith, M. D., 
for a prescription. 

The reason package medicine has recently become so 
dangerous on account of its alcoholic content is because 
prohibition sentiment at this time is an all-consuming 
fire in this country and the wise gazabo, the wop of the 
Waterman, sees his chance. 

The average scribbling grub-staker of the fourth estate 
does not know whether proprietary remedies are good or 
not, neither dos he care; he merely knows he can get in 
the middle of the spot light by riding a popular hobby 
while it is popular. 

We believe, however, that the estate of this mythical 
chap who has killed himself in practically every section 
of the country should be remunerated in some way for 
dying so often and in so many different places while 
taking a poke at his rehumatism without getting permis- 
sion from the powers that be and paying for same. 

WORK OR FIGHT 

PROVOST MARSHAL GENERAL CROWDER 
recently announced an amendement to the Selective 
Service Regulations which deals with the question 
of compelling men not engaged in useful occupations to 
immediately engage themselves in such occupations or 



186 MISCELLANEOUS 

enter the army. The list of persons affected includes 
gamblers of all kinds, employes of bucket shops and race 
tracks, fortune tellers, clairvoyants, palmists, etc. This 
wonderful regulation should not end with the war, but 
should be made perpetual. Think of the supreme pleas- 
ure there would be in watching the masculine specimen 
wearing the rainbow vest and the quick seven smile 
chasing a McCormick binder around a thousand acre 
wheat field for three dollars a day. Blistering the lily 
white hands that used to knick the aces and lead the 
bones in order to bring a divorcement between the fool 
and his money. Race track and bucket shop employes 
are included in the list, and for the honest man who has 
always worked for his money this gang at work will 
present a most pleasing and rare sight. 

Fortune tellers, clairvoyants and palmists are also 
plainly told to work or fight. Professor Fezzlewhiskers, 
of the painted spinach and the oriental odor, will soon be 
juggling spuds instead of peaching on fate. We may 

expect soon to see the wonderful palmist direct from 
Calcutta who can tell by the lines in your hand that your 
great grandfather had a red complexion and smoked a cob 
pipe, drifting back to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he 
was born in order to help with the corn crop this fall. 
And there is the clairvoyant who is "seeing things'* 
without having taken a drop, who will soon have his 
wonderful vision concentrated on a cotton patch that is 
white for the harvest. The war has its horrors but out 
of the philosophy of giving the devil his due, we should 
be thankful for some things it has done for us. One of 
these things is the order that puts the parasites to earn- 
ing a living honestly, not that anybody cares whether 
they have a living or not but because the industries of 
this country need labor and must have it and it saves 
the former victims from whom they used to flim-flam an 
existence. 

This order will reach the the gang of human driftwood 
that hangs around public pool and billiard halls, street 
corner loafers and the passengers of side door Pullman 
cars. Work should be the mission of every man in crea- 
tion, and he who does not work is a parasite on the hu- 
man race, it matters not whether he be a possessor of 
wealth or a victim of poverty. Provost Marshal General 
Crowder deserves decoration for any man who makes 
the idle work has done the world a very great service. 



MISCELLANEOUS 187 

THE JOBBER 

WE tout as the pillars of drugdom manufactur- 
ers, retailers and clerks. We herald their 
part in the traffic, their importance, their 
efforts and work — the mainstays of the industry — 
links in the commercial chain — that the drug trade's 
dependent upon them, has been proven again and again. 
Manufacturers couldn't live without druggists nor drug- 
gists without the makers of wares — and to the great game 
pharmaceutical — each one contributes his share. But 
the chap who never gets credit in speech or printed page 
for his worth to the business of drugdom is the jobber 
of the present age. 

He assembles the products of the nations — even to 
earth's remotest bounds — handles an order of a thousand 
items in which mostly twelfth dozens are found. The 
thousand item order that the jobber fills complete would 
require a thousand orders and a wait of many weeks. He 
stands by the financial weaklings who cannot stand alone 
— and pulls them through tight places when they couldn't 
get a loan — yet the crackajack — one-trip tourist loads 
Weakling William Wade with twelve gross of Super 
Talco — 5 off and freight prepaid. William stores the junk 
for years until he begins to feel that he has a commercial 
souvenir that a burglar would not steal. When the in- 
terest has eaten the profit and the moths have tackled the 
cans — he asks a kindly jobber to take it off his hands. 

Oh ! ye of retail drugdom, stand by the faithful friend 
who backed you in the uphill fight — ^the man who made 
you win. Buy a twelfth if you don't need a dozen from 
the jobber. Do you hear? A regular two per cent each 
month beats five per cent each year. 



MODERN PHARMACY QUESTIONS 



W 



HAT is pharmacy? An ailment for which there 
is no specific. 

What is a pharmacist? A well-dressed hu- 
man door mat who sells stamps, hunts the city directory 
and tells the people when the 2 :30 train leaves. 

What is an apothecary? A pharmacist with whiskers 
who wears clothes of the vintage of 1876 and smells like 
carbon disulphide. 

What is a druggist? An amateur from the agricul- 
tural fraternity who thinks Compound Cathartics grow 
six in a pod. 



188 MISCELLANEOUS 

Name several sciences included in the comprehensive 
study of pharmacy. Physiognomy, Phrenology, Femi- 
ninity, Natural History, Green Goods, Christian Science 
and Porch Climbing. 

What is an official preparation? A preparation that 
has been supplanted by a proprietary of the same formula. 

What is the purpose of a Latin official title? Mum's 
the word. 

Give an example of a combatant. Wilhelm Bodemann. 

What is the difference in camphor spirits and camphor 
water? Seventy-five cents a pint. 

What is the relation of the pharmacist to the physi- 
sian? The pharmacist stands between the physician and 
the undertaker. 

STATE BOARD QUESTIONS 

WHAT is a pharmaceutical irritant? A dispen- 
sing doctor. 

What is Posology? A text book for ar- 
tist's model. 

Give an example of an amorphus salt. Galveston, 
Texas. 

Name two insects that are official? The president and 
secretary of the State Board of Pharmacy. 

How is spirits frumenti obtained? Depends on where 
you are. 

What is an emetic? A freshman from the medical 
department. 

Give an example of an effervescent official prepara- 
tion. Bob Prick's presidential address. 

What is hellebore? A persistent salesman with a line 
that died in 1860. 

Where does alcohol evaporate with greatest rapidity? 
In a dry town. 

What is evolution? A theory that Darwin used for 
making monkeys out of all of us. 

Name an official bean. Charley Huhn's head. 

What is auto-intoxication? It is the worst kind; its 
seriousness depends on how much the chauffeur will 
stand for. 

What is pharmacy? A term formerly applied to a 
branch of the drug business. 



MISCELLANEOUS 189 

THE DOUBLE NUISANCE TAX 

WE used to think the soda tax was a nuisance 
raised to the nth degree. In the former soda 
tax our holler was that the government made 
tax collectors of us without remuneration. However, 
the latest atrocity announced by Congress at Washington 
still permits us to be tax collectors without remuneration 
and we are not allowed to collect the tax off of the 
customer, but are permitted to pay it ourselves. This 
wonderful improvement promised, and the goods deliv- 
ered brings a groan from the drug trade that listens like 
a Republican campaign promise hitting the tidal wave 
of present "prosperity." 

A tax of two cents a gallon on still drinks. Ye gods, 
what a puzzle! The white aproned, angel-faced phiz 
fondler of the future will have to know something be- 
sides how to comb his hair straight back. He will have 
to be a bookkeeper with a head for figures. When he 
puts twenty-one and one-third, six-ounce, plain water 
grape phosphates on the rail and has made twenty-one 
and two-thirds entries in his book of mystery he will be 
ready to pay the Government the price of a postage 
stamp. If the revenue department will now constitute 
itself into a legislative body and require that the record 
be kept on pink paper with violet ink to be written by 
a left-handed soda jerker between the hours of one and 
two o'clock p. m. our happiness will be complete insofar 
as still drinks are concerned. This still drink tax will 
cost the average soda fountain owner a dollar for every 
two cents the Government gets out of it. All the bone 
heads are not in the baseball orchards. We believe it 
behooves us, dear constituents, to warn our so-called 
servants in the forum against scratching their heads — 
this on account of the danger of getting splinters under 
their nails. It seems that it might have dawned on some 
of the solons that sales tax on soda fountains would have 
been somewhat simpler in its workings than the syrup 
tax or the still drink tax. For instance, if a druggist sells 
one hundred and twenty-eight lemonades in a month — ten 
gallons, he will have made one hundred and twenty- 
eight entries, used up a bale of paper and several hours* 
time and the Government will get twenty cents. 

If a farmer had a horse to sell worth one hundred and 
fifty dollars he would probably quote the horse at one 
hundred and fifty dollars flat. Just a hundred and fifty 
dollars* worth of horse for one hundred and fifty dollars, 
but if congress had a horse to sell, a committee would be 
appointed to devise ways and means of pricing the con- 



190 MISCELLANEOUS 

gressional horse. The outcome would probably be to 
count the hairs in the white spot in the horse's forehead, 
the committee would likely report that there were three 
hundred hairs in the syot and recommend that the price 
of the horse be arrived at by charging for the horse an 
amount equal to the sum of the hairs figured at a half 
cent for each hair. His proposition is not a bit more 
ridiculous than the still drink tax that has been promul- 
gated. In other words, Congress does not seem satisfied 
with its alleged labors unless it has fixed it so the tax 
payer will have the most trouble possible in arriving at 
the amount of his burden. This is true of income and ex- 
cess profits tax. In addition to paying the tax the aver- 
age citizen must pay an expert to tell him how much to 
pay. 

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO? 

ON JULY 1. 1919. this great country is to assume a 
humidity like that of Sahara. No more whirring 
fans, clinking glasses, flying corks and fitting 
smiles after that eventful day in our history and the fol- 
lowing from the busy pen of Robert J. Frick of the Ken- 
tucky Druggist is interesting: 

"In passing (passing, mind you) a saloon in the neigh- 
borhood of Second and Market Streets recently we were 
attracted by a sign, hanging on the outer door of the 
establishment, which read as follows : *Don't ask us what 
we are going to do. What in h — 1 are you going to do 
after the first of July, 1919?* Not having heard many 
answers to our question in the December number, we are 
inclined to believe that the boys are pondering over what 
they really will do after July 1, 1919. Don't worry — just 
think of the company you will have — and nobody will 
know how dry you are." 

In the first place we would have to have shock absorb- 
ers on our imagination before trying to imagine a Ken- 
tucky gentleman of Bob Frick*s build, shape, taste and 
politics passing a saloon, think of it! We chaps in the 
arid desert, in Texas for instance, do not call it a saloon, 
we call it an "oasis" and that any man would pass one 
of these by as Bob Frick avers he did is beyond our 
powers of understanding. Of course it is barely pos- 
sible that in the land of beautiful women, speedy colts 
and the world's richest and mellowest bourbon a 
man would pass a small oasis in order to get to one that 
was larger, and that had more of those good-looking, 
white-clad, diamond-bedecked chaps who open up a 
bundle of broad grins with their "what's yours?" but we 



MISCELLANEOUS 191 

will have to have Mr. Prick's affidavit that he passed this 
for any other reason than the one assigned above. In 
Texas we have about ceased to think of what we will do 
after July, a large majority of us will drink water, some 
will swig hair tonic, others toilet water and down in Aus- 
tin, the state capital, lemon extract seems at this time to 
be a hundred-to-one favorite as a brew for drowning 
trouble and making the world look different. Of course 
the Texan who uesd to fasten his corporal system to a 
gentlemanly jag wth his foot on the brass rail and his 
pully bone on the mahogany will not be able to put on 
as classy a stew as of old, although he may have a Mary 
Garden breath from his toilet water tipple, or a whiff 
from his direction may suggest fruit cake or cream puff. 

TILE AND TILL 

"The reason most people do not recognize an oppor- 
tunity when they see it is because it usually goes around 
wearing overalls and looking like hard work." 

So many people who think they are looking for an 
opportunity are mistaken in what they are looking for, 
they are really looking for a "snap." Snaps in this age 
of the world are about as plentiful as teeth in the oral 
cavity of a Shanghai rooster. The chap who is looking 
for an upholstered snap with push buttons on it should 
call a spade a spade, and should not prevaricaate by spill- 
ing the information that he is looking for an opportunity. 
A chance to drill a six foot hole in a ledge of blue flint 
at a dollar a foot is an opportunity, to get the money 
without pounding the drill is a snap, there are a thousand 
of the former to one of the latter. Snaps grow very few in 
a hill, and not many hills, while opportunities are still 
as numberless as the sands of the sea for the fellow who 
has discretion enough to see them and nerve enough to 
grab them. 



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